" Tegner's poetic creed was exactly that
of Schiller, who saw no impropriety in making the peasant lad, Arnold
Melchthal, when he hears that his father has been blinded, deliver an
enraptured apostrophe to the light:
"O eine edle Himmelsgabe ist
Das Licht des Auges," etc.
The rhetorical note is predominant in both. Their thoughts have to be
arrayed in the flowing toga before they are held to be presentable. This
is the academic tendency in Sweden as in France, even though the degree
of euphemistic magniloquence may differ with the age and latitude. The
Swedes have been called the Frenchmen of the North, and there is no
doubt that delight in this toga-clad rhetoric is inherent in both. It
was because Tegner, in appealing to this delight, was so deeply
representative that he extinguished the old school and became the
national poet of Sweden.
* * * * *
Transcriber's notes:
Dostoyevski is also spelled Dostojevski and Dostoyefski
Tolstoi is also spelled Tostoi.
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