n his rustic figures, but they are so
living, so real, they appeal so strongly to the innermost feelings,
that they seem the embodiment of one's thoughts. His pictures are like
those of the Dutch painters: every trait in the rustic scene tells the
life-story of some humble existence.

It is this characteristic which has made the poet appeal so powerfully
to the minds of the people. He seems to see with their eyes and feel
with their hearts, and to have experienced all the vicissitudes of
their own life. And yet he eminently reflects his own time, the gay,
the light-hearted Gustavian era, with its classical fancies and rococo
tastes. Venus and Bacchus, the Nymphs and the Dryads, Hebe and Amor
are mixed up incongruously with the homely scenes of Scandinavian
life. His Dutch pictures assume then a Watteau-like coloring of
extraordinary effect, as fancy and contrast enhance the sharp outlines
of his figures and give their vitality still greater relief. They are
so lifelike and so various that the whole of the every-day life of
Sweden, and more especially of Stockholm, of the eighteenth century,
is unrolled before our eyes. It is said that if every other book
descriptive of the period were to fail, his verses would suffice to
inform us how the middle classes then lived, thought, and felt.
Around the poet's monument--his bust in bronze on a white marble
column--there gather, on the anniversary of his birth, the crowds who
love him and love his song. Every heart beats high as the Bellman
choirs burst forth in turn into the well-known melodies, composed
or adapted by the poet himself to his words, and sung by him to the
accompaniment of his lute. And song alternates with enthusiastic
orations, addressed to the crowd by improvised orators, teeming with
quotations of well-known lines. It is an orgy of Bellman's verse, such
as the Stockholmer specially delights in. Bellman's songs generally
form a sequence, a continuous chain of lyrical romance. His _Fredman's
Epistles_ are a sort of epic cycle of lyrics. This is a form often
adopted by Swedish poets. We find it in Tegner's _Frithiof's Saga_,
in Runeberg's _Sayings of Sergeant Stal_, and in the works of other
poets. It is a question, however, whether even by these Master
Singers, in their more elaborate conceptions and genial flights of
poetry, Bellman has ever been surpassed. In lyric power and vivid
realism, his popular ditties are unrivaled.

The next to incarnate the genius