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368 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
history."
He was a most inspiring lecturer on this sub
ject, All the persons about whom he read and their
actions became living to himself, and he conveyed this
sense of life to his hearers. He did not create the taste for
history in Sweden which had long existed, and which
Dalin had done something to improve, but he profoundly
modified the conception of what true history is, and in
duced many to take an interest in it who would otherwise
have regarded it as dry and tasteless.
4
Geijer was not exactly orthodox either as regards the
Bible or the Church, and some of his followers, such as
K. P. Wikner (18371888), went further than he did,
epecially in his book Thoughts and Questions in the
Presence of (infor) the Son of Man a book which
attracted many readers and raised much controversy.
Of the bishops of this period Wallin is undoubtedly the
most important. His speech as a young man at the first
anniversary of the Bible Society in 1816 made almost as
much impression as Geijer s essay, yet it was only on the
text which, to us, seems so natural, that it is wrong and
irrational to put
"
the Supreme Being
"
in the place of the
living God. As a preacher, according to his contem
porary, Tegner, he was unrivalled. His power of speak
ing was enhanced by an original method of delivery, into
which he introduced an accent different from that in com
mon use, while his language vibrated with poetry.
5
His
powerful voice sounded like a message from another world.
It roused the sleeping conscience ;
it seemed to compel
obedience. As a poet he is best known by the new hymn-
4
The reader may remember an often quoted passage in
which Geijer describes his early life. It is translated in Mary
Howitt s book, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe,
//., pp. 366-9. He wrote in secret for the Academy s prize,
an eulogy on Sten Sture the elder, and complained that he had
only access to Dalin s crabbed pages but he won the prize.
5
See Howitt s Literature and Romance of Northern Europe,
Vol. II., p. 339 foil. On Tegner, see H. H. Boyesen, Essays
on Scandinavian Literature, 219-288.
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