Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/373

Rh which aroused the greatest expectations, there was inaugurated amid great exaltation a new era, in which the national element became more powerful than ever before, and created for itself new and peculiar forms. The struggle between these two currents—on one side the climax of that development which had started with the beginning of Swedish literature, and on the other side the movement, which in other places had produced the new romantic school—gives the Gustavian period its great significance.

Although Gustav III in no way sought to hinder the progress of the national element, which developed itself independently of French models, but on the contrary was fully conscious of its importance and encouraged its representatives and champions, still his sympathies were decidedly on the other side; in the public institutions which he founded for the advancement of literature, the French element was favored as much as possible. Such was particularly the case with the Swedish Academy, which he founded in 1786, using the French Academy as his model. Its main purpose was to encourage and support poetry, eloquence, history, and the study of the Swedish language, in which branches it has not, however, achieved much, since from the very outset to the present, it has been purely a question of etiquette who should become one of the "eighteen" members of the academy. In the days of its founder it contributed much to the establishment of French taste. In the king's inaugural address we discover the characteristic importance which he attached to the newly founded academy, for he declared that the institution was intended to serve "the most noble pastime," and the advancement of eloquence and poetry. Poetry, a pastime! that was indeed the prevailing opinion of the eighteenth century! In 1782 the king founded the national theatre, and here, too, he encouraged French taste with all his might. He wrote several dramas himself, for which he borrowed the materials from Swedish history, and among them are "Gustav Vasa," "Gustav Adolph och Ebbe Brahe," and "Siri Brahe