Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/363



HE foreign influence, which in the preceding period had asserted itself in the poetical literature of Sweden, had come chiefly from Germany. But already in the second half of the seventeenth century French taste began to be introduced, and in Sweden, as in the rest of Europe, the extensive French literature was spread in a manner that effectually obstructed all independent development. This tendency reached its climax when Louise Ulrika, the sister of Frederik the Great, and as great a lover of French as her brother, became Queen of Sweden. Some attention was, indeed, paid to English literature, but this could not counterbalance the French, as it was itself strongly influenced by the latter. Thus it came to pass that the Swedish poetry of this period was nothing but an imitation of French models, with a painfully strict observation of the formality of the pusedopseudo [sic]-classical school. People were unable to raise themselves to the importance of poetry as a free art. To the poets as well as to the public, poetry was partly merely a pleasant pastime and partly a means of promoting the common good, inasmuch as matters of practical utility were treated in verse. In other words, a rhetorical, rhymed prose took the place of poetry, and an exaggerated stress was laid on the form. This also had its advantage, for the poets who succeeded Stjernhjelm had gradually lost appreciation of the purity of the language and of the true art of versification. In this respect the Dalin period marks a