Shortly after his
return he was stricken with paralysis, and died November 2, 1846, in the
sixty-fourth year of his age. His mind was unclouded and his voice was
clear. When the autumnal sun suddenly burst through the windows and
shone upon the dying poet, he murmured: "I will lift up mine hands unto
the house and the mountain of God."
These were his last words. He was carried to the grave at night by the
light of lanterns, followed by a long procession of the clergy,
citizens, and the school-boys of his diocese. Peasants, from whose ranks
he had sprung and to whom he was always a good friend, bore his coffin.
The academic tendency which "idealizes" life and shuns earth-scented
facts, had, through the decisive influence of Tegner, been victorious in
Swedish literature. I am aware that some will regard this as a
questionable statement; for the academicism of Tegner is not the
stately, bloodless, Gallic classicism of the Gustavian age, of which
Leopold was the last representative. It is much closer to the classicism
of Goethe in "Iphigenia" and "Hermann and Dorothea," and of Schiller in
"Wallenstein" and "Wilhelm Tell.
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