Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/386

368 ring age so full of reformatory and revolutionary tendencies. In his early youth Thorild sympathized with Leopold, and even assisted him in his controversy with Kellgren, but the marked difference between them soon asserted itself in a most decided manner. Leopold and Kellgren were reconciled, and soon united themselves against the violent and reckless opponent of French taste. A warm literary feud was begun, which lasted several years, and continually assumed greater proportions. On both sides the war was carried on with zeal and talent, both parties feeling that important principles were at stake, and when Thorild finally gained the victory and by his well-aimed blows gradually disabled the adherents of the old school, this was not so much owing to his polemical superiority as to his profound appreciation of life and art, as contrasted with the empty formality of the other party. Rousseau had been his master, as Voltaire had been that of his opponents. He was filled with the ideas of Klopstock and Ossian, and leaning on both these authors he managed to introduce romanticism into Sweden. Characteristic of the position of literature in that period was the circumstance which led to the outbreak of the great conflict. Thorild had sent his poem, "Passionerna" (the passions), to the society, "Utile Dulci," where Kellgren reigned supreme, and did not receive the first prize, but only an inferior one. While the society commended the talent displayed in the poem, it found it necessary to blame "the author's dangerous and needless deviation from the old-established rules of versification." Thorild's poem was written in hexameters.

In spite of his love of the art Thorild was no poet, and but few of his compositions make any satisfactory impression. The thinker continually comes to the front, while the absolutely intuitive, creative artist almost wholly disappears. His thoughts are, however, generally lofty, and his expressions occasionally attain a genuine poetic flight, but as a rule he loses himself in abstract reflections and pompous pathos. On this account his own poems were of but little importance