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“ There, on the whole, the king has ever been the people’s faithfullest ally, and all his great designs for the country’s external and internal gain have been carried out “by the help of God and Sweden.” Throughout life Geijer was what he professed to be, a seeker; and to no philosophic system did he yield absolute allegiance. Yet his writings mark a new era in Swedish history, the rise of a “critical school” whose aim is to draw the truth without distortion, and present reality without a foil. ”

“ A few strokes, and a personality stands before us instinct with life. His language is at once the scholar’s and the poet’s; with his profoundest thought there beats in unison the warmest, the noblest, the most patriotic heart. Geijer came to the writing of history fresh from researches in the whole field of Scandinavian antiquity, researches whose first-fruits are garnered in numerous articles in Iduna, and his masterly treatise Om den gamla nordiska folkvisan, prefixed to the collection of Svenska folkvisor which he edited with A. A. (3 vols. 1814–16) . ”

“ Soon afterwards he accepted a post in the public record office at Stockholm, where, with eleven friends, he founded the “Gothic Society,” to whose organ Iduna he contributed a number of prose essays and the songs Manhem, Vikingen, Den siste kampen, Den siste skalden, Odalbonden, Kolargossen, and others, whose simplicity and earnestness, warm feeling, and strong patriotic spirit are dearer to his nation for the fine melodies to which he set them. ”