l of physicians
may have been the primary cause of the sufferings here described, and
was no doubt aggravated by the psychical condition to which I have
alluded. Now it was supposed to be the liver which was affected; then
again Tegner was treated for gall-stones. In the summer of 1833 he made
a journey through Germany and spent some months at Carlsbad; but he
returned without sensible relief. His foreign sojourn was, however, of
some benefit in widening his mental horizon. Tegner's intellectual
affinities had always been French; and toward Germany he had assumed a
more or less unsympathetic attitude. A slight acquaintance with the
philosopher Schleiermacher and the Germanized Norwegian author Henrik
Steffens (who was then a professor at the University of Berlin) did not,
indeed, reverse his predilections, but it opened his eyes to
excellences in the German people to which he had formerly been blind,
and removed prejudices which had obscured his vision. He had everywhere
the most distinguished reception, and was honored with an invitation to
Sans Souci, where he was the guest of the witty Crown Prince of Prussia,
later Frederick William IV. But these agreeable incidents of his journey
were a poor compensation for his failure to obtain that which he had
gone in search of. Fame, honor, and distinguished friends, without
health, are but a Tantalus feast, the sweets of which are seen but never
tasted.

"I fear," said Tegner, in his hopelessness, "that my right side, like
that of the Chamber of Deputies, is incurable."

"When this Saul's spirit comes over me I often feel an indescribable
bitterness, which endures nothing, spares nothing, in heaven or on
earth. It usually finds vent in misanthropic reflections, sarcasms, and
ideas which I have no sooner written down than I repent of them."

The activity which he unfolded, even in the midst of intolerable
sufferings, was phenomenal. He possessed an energy of will and vigor of
temperament which enabled him to rise superior to his physical
condition, and lure strong music (though sometimes jarred into discords)
from the broken lyre. It was in 1829, after his illness had fastened its
hold upon him, that he pronounced the beautiful epilogue in hexameters
at the graduating festivities at the University of Lund, and crowned
the Dane, Adam Oehlenschlaeger, as the king of poets:

"Now, before thou beginnest the distribution of laurels
Grant me one for him in whom I shall h