TEGNER, ESAJAS, a Swedish poet of high reputation, was born in 1782 at Kyrkerud, in the Swedish province of Wermland, and educated at the university of Lund, where he took the degree of M A. in 1802. In 1805 he was appointed sub-librarian to the uni versity, and lecturer on aesthetics. In 1811 the academy prize was awarded to' Tegner's poem of Svea, or Sweden, which at once raised him to the rank of one of the most popu lar writers of his country. Prior to the appearance of this successful poem, he had written several spirited war-songs and national odes, which had attracted the favorable notice of the king and government. In 1812 he became professor of Greek, and at the same time was ordained to the pastoral care of the parish of Stltfje. During the next 10 or 12 years of his life, he devoted himself to the prosecution of his clerical duties, and the acquisition of theological learning, with an earnest and unwearying zeal which was scarcely to be expected from his previous indulgence in the pleasures of society, and his natural inclination toward the exhibition of a taste for coarse humor and equivocal puns. During this period, he composed his two famous religious idyls of Prestvigelsen, or the " Consecration of a Priest," and Hattvardsbarnen, or "The Young Communicants," and wrote his Axel, a poetic romance, which is regarded by some Swedish critics as even superior to his Frithiof's Saga, of which the first cantos appeared in a literary journal, edited by the historian Gejer, under the 'Atle of the Iduna, and conducted under the auspices of the Gothic society, the leading object of which was to foster national litera ture, and put down the prevalent taste for the pedantic classical or foreign school of writing. In 1825 Teener published the closing parts of Frithwf's Saga, which rather errs in the opposite direction, and follows too closely the ancient saga on which the tale is founded. But notwithstanding the inharmonious character of the composition, which
may be regarded rather as a collection of many ballads and odes in various meters than as a complete epic, the Frithiof's Saga became the most popular poem of Sweden, and attracted to its author the admiration and notice both of his fellow-clergy and of the sov ereign, as was evinced in 1824 by the clergy of the diocese of Wexio nominating him for the vacant bishopric, and the king at once appointing him to the see. In his place at the diet, as a member of the chamber of the clergy, he made himself conspicuous for his support of ultra-conservative views, in opposition to the extreme liberal doctrines which he had advocated in early life. His speeches in the chamber and on numerous other public occasions have a great reputation in Sweden and Norway, and are devoted to the discussion of questions of education, literature, and finance. In 1839 Tegner was proposed for the archbishopric of Upsala; but in the following year, he was seized with unmistakable symptoms of insanity, which bad been strongly manifested in two of his brothers and other members of his family. Although, after a few months' confinement in an asylum, he was able to return to his work, his health soon broke down; and after lingering for many months in a paralytic condition, he died in 1846. His collective works were edited by his son-in-law, prof. Bottiger, and published in 6 volumes (Stock. 1848). All his larger and more popular poems have been translated in to*German, French, and English; the English translations of his Frithiof are very numerous, three or four new ones having appeared between 1873 (Spalding's) and 1879. Lorgfellow's is well known.