The university of Lund hastened to appropriate to itself its brilliant alumnus, as private instructor in Æsthetics. Three years later occurred his marriage with Anna Myhrman. For several years his lyre was silent. He believed success for him lay in the line of scholarship, and only for solace or merriment he tuned its chords. In 1808 appears the first truly national and characteristic poem of this skald, “To the Defenders of Sweden.” “This warlike dithyramb sounded like an alarm-bell through every national breast. Tones at once so defiant and so beautiful had not been heard before. These double services as instructor and poet attracted the attention of the throne. It was manifested by a commission investing Tegnér with the name, rank and honor of professor.” It was during this period that Tegnér’s literary reputation neared its radiant meridian. Poems of various sort came forth with strange rapidity,—as yet, however, none of much extent. There were at this time two schools of poetry in Sweden,—the mystical, or “phosphoristic,” and the Gothic. The former inclined toward foreign, especially German, models, the latter maintained the sufficiency of national models and subjects. Tegnér, though an ardent disciple of the Gothic school, disdained discussion, and maintained that the best argument was example. Such example he was himself destined soon to furnish. In 1820 appeared his “sacredly sweet Whitsun Idyl,” “The Children of the Lord’s Supper,” which has been so well rendered into English by Mr. Longfellow. Though clear and simple as the brooks and sunshine this poem lacks the stir and vigor which it was so easy for Tegnér to impart. In the next year this lack was supplied in the poem of “Axel,” and almost at the same time by the publication of his “Frithiof’s Saga,”—“the apples,” says Geijer [Yeiyer], “through which the gods yet show their power to make immortal.” This is an old Norse legend which Tegnér has rewritten and modernized, and at the same time charged full with the fervor of his mighty soul. “It would be superfluous to recount here the applause with which this master poem of Northern poetic genius was vociferously greeted by all the educated world; how Goethe from his throne of poetical eminence bowed his laurel-crowned gray locks in homage to it; how all the languages of Europe, even the Russian, Polish and modern Greek, hastened to appropriate to themselves greater or less portions of the same; how in the poet’s own country it soon became a living joy upon the lips of the people, a treasure in the day-laborer’s cot as in the prince’s halls. Its author’s name has gone abroad together with that of Linnæus, and wherever one goes one hears it mentioned with respect and admiration.”