Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/392

374 gathered a circle of young enthusiastic poets. From the periodical "Phosphoros," which they edited, they received the name Phosphorists. In their poetry they worshipped romanticism in the form in which it had appeared in Germany, with its vague longing, abstract reflections, its depreciation of reality, and its partiality for the misty middle age and graceful southern form of versification. But side by side with this hyperidealistic tendency there sprang up another movement, which was in some respects akin to it, but which had more of interest for real life, and which was preëminently national. It received the name of the Gothic school, because it strove to make Old Norse (Gothic) mythology and poetry and in general the whole antiquity of the North the basis of national culture and art. Besides the adherents of these two schools there were also some talented poets, who were independent not only of both schools, but also of the Academy. The two most eminent among these neutrals, Franzén and Wallin, appeared before the conflict between the old and the new schools had broken out.

was born in 1772 at Uleåborg in Finland, and became professor, at Åbo, but after the conquest of Finland he went to Sweden, where he died as bishop in Hörnesund in 1847. Already at the close of the eighteenth century his poems and songs, that were published in Kellgren's periodical, were read with pleasure by the public, and in 1797 he gained the prize offered by the Academy, for an exquisite poem in honor of Creutz, which did not, however, receive the unqualified approval of the Academy, since the form had been treated with more freedom than seemed desirable. Though Franzén did not blindly follow the precepts of the Academy, still he was unable to rise entirely above its influence. This fact is especially apparent in some of his longer poems, which are more or less didactic in their character. The didactic element is particularly prominent in his poem on the destiny of man, but the idyllic