The golden lyres of Romanticism were silenced and the epigones were hushed by the sarcasms of Realism. Count Snoilsky and Victor Rydberg were the only poets of the earlier period who sang with inspiration and were listened to. After the realistic movement of the eighties came a romantic reaction with new lyrics and new novelists, who avoided the ruthlessness of the realists, but had profited by their merits. This new movement cannot be called a school, for it is marked by its great versatility of subjects and great elasticity of treatment. If the definition of realistic art be “a piece of nature seen through a temperament,” that of the new movement may be “an artistic temperament attuned to pieces of nature,” a sensitive and supple talent which has an almost unlimited capacity to tell every story just in the vein its particular subject demands. Pre-eminent in this movement stand Ola Hansson, Selma Lagerlœf, Verner von Heidenstam, Gustaf af Geijerstam, Peter Hallstrœm, Thor Hedberg, Oscar Levertin, all fine novelists, almost all good poets, and Geijerstam, an able dramatist. One of the most interesting and supremely gifted poets Sweden has ever had is Gustaf Frœding, who generally excels, sometimes abuses, his remarkable versatility in finding a true lyric expression for the very widest range of subjects. Sigurd Hedenstierna is the most popular humorist, witty in his sketches, but impossible as a novelist. The greatest humorists are August Strindberg and Gustaf Frœding. Contemporary Sweden has very few and no great literary critics, but some good literary historians in Henric Schueck, Karl Warburg and Oscar Levertin. She has a number of able journalists, most distinguished among whom is their Nestor, S. A. Hedlund, of Gothenburg, a fiery but dignified champion of a liberal government, religious tolerance, social evolution and cultural progress.