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2 7S VI. GREAT KINGS AND BISHOPS (A.D. 15931718).
Camden and our Dugdale. He was, like Parker and his
own contemporary Bureus, a collector of old national
manuscripts. Like Camden, he was a historian of his own
country, and his Scondia Illustrata 26
rivals, and, perhaps
excels, our Britannia. Like Dugdale, he was studious of
the details of personal history and of ancient monuments,
though he left nothing so important as the Monaslicon.
His sympathies were doubtless with the old religion, of
which he was suspected, with justice, of being an adherent,
and which he openly professed before his death. But he
was a critical and conscientious historian, and judged his
predecessors and contemporaries without party spirit. Be
sides his antiquarian tastes, he was a dramatist of much
repute in his own age. Both he and Rudbeckius had this
in common that they were humanists and opposed to the
revived Scholasticism, and Messenius won the affection of
his undergraduates by teaching them how to act. His
Disa takes its name from a legendary queen or goddess,
whose yearly fair, the
"
Disting," is a marked event in the
city of Upsala. It was a good play for acting, though he
had little poetry or power of drawing character. Unfortu
nately he had an overweening opinion of his own talents,
and wrote his epitaph in Swedish as follows :
"
Here lie the bones of Doctor John Messenius;
His soul s above : the world proclaims his genius."
27
As I am speaking of humanist writings, I will just notice
another much better poet, the Dalecarlian George Stiern-
hielm, whose life was also closely connected with that of
Rudbeckius, but who stood in a much happier relation to
him as a trusted teacher in his gymnasium. He was
another of the encyclopaedic minds of Sweden, being
26
It was published long after his death by Peringskiold,
17001705.
27
Har under hvila sig Doctoris Johannis Messenii ben :
Sjalen i Guds rike; men ryktet kring hela verlden.
I am afraid that the first line is intended for an hexameter.
Notice the rhyme in the pentameter.
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