Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/366

348 fourth year she had lost her husband. These poems and the report of the romantic manner in which in poetic solitude she continued to mourn the loss of her husband, soon made her name widely known. She met the most eminent writers of elegant literature in her day, and wrote with great industry. In her later works the original freshness and tenderness of her earlier poems gradually disappeared, and at length to her own satisfaction and that of her admirers she adopted the prevailing artificial style and thus received the surname "the Swedish Urania." From 1744-50 she edited the poetic annual "Quinligt Tankespel af en Herdinna i Norden" (The plays of thought of a shepherdess in the North). Of her other works we may mention "Tankar om Skaldekonstens Nytta" (thoughts on the utility of poetry) and "Det frelste Svea" (the saved Sweden). In literature she forms together with Dalin a characteristic transition from the Stjernhjelm to the succeeding Gustavian period. But while Dalin was intent on seeking a form for Swedish poetry which should combine certain older and homely elements, such as they had appeared in Frese, Lucidor and the other lyric poets, with the new and foreign elements, Fru Nordenflycht belonged in the beginning of her literary activity decidedly to the former, and later to the latter of these tendencies. By her own example, and through the circle of authors by whom she was surrounded and with whom she maintained an intellectual communion, she contributed much toward giving the French element the supremacy in the development of Swedish literature.

To this circle belonged the counts Creutz and Gyllenborg, "the dioskuri of the sky of Swedish poetry." The Finlander