“A few years ago north of the church in Tegnaby, there was seen a gray cottage fallen into ruins, with moss-grown walls and two little windows of which one, according to the ancient custom of the province, was in the roof. The people regarded it with a kind of reverence; and if one asked the reason, the hat was raised with the answer: ‘The Bishop’s grandfather once lived there.’ His name was Lucas Esai´asson, his wife’s Ingeborg Mänsdotter. According to testimony handed down traditionally in the parish, this Lucas Esaiasson was a poor but exceedingly industrious and pious man. A peasant during a greater part of the time when Charles XII. was king, he continued yet twenty years after the ‘shot,’ a Carolinian at the plow. This and his Bible were his dearest treasures, and all he had to leave to fourteen children, for whom he procured bread with the plow after he had given them names from the Scriptures. There was one called Paul, another John, a third Enoch, and so on. A whole temple-progeny was growing up under his lowly roof: the Old and New Testaments were embracing each other in his cottage. The youngest son, born on the day of King Charles’s death, was named Esaias. The older brothers inherited their father’s plow, and became peasants; Esaias inherited his father’s Bible and became a minister.” We wish we could continue to quote Mr. Böttiger, but his story proceeds too slowly. This Esaias was the father of our poet. Showing unusual aptitude for books, he was taken from the farm where he had gone out to service, and placed in the school of Wexiö. Coming from the _by_ or village of Tegn, and having but one name, he was entered in the school register, kept after the manner of the time in Latin, as Esaias Tegnérus. The latter, the Latin suffix _us_ being omitted, became afterward the family name. In due time this Esaias Tegnér passed to the university, and after graduation was ordained as we have seen, a minister. He is remembered as a talented preacher, and merry man of society. He married a pastor’s daughter whose mother was celebrated for wit, force of character, and poetic gifts. Like qualities reappear in a marked degree in our poet, who was the fifth son of this marriage. He was born in Kykerud [Chikerood], November 13, 1782, and took his father’s name.