Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Lorenzo Hammarsköld

HAMMARSKÖLD, Lorenzo (1785–1827), Swedish author, was born at Tuna, near Wimmerby, on the 7th of April 1785. He became a student at Upsala in 1801, but failed to take his degree in 1806. He therefore accepted a humble post at the royal library at Stockholm, with which institution he remained connected for many years. In 1804 he published an article on Tieck and Novalis, which attracted much attention, and was the means of founding the “Phosphoric School,” as it was called, of poetry in Sweden. Hammersköld became the friend of Atterbom and antagonist of Wallmark, and in due time, by the bitterness of his tone, brought down on himself the scathing anger of Tegnér. In 1806 he published Translations and Imitations of Poets, Old and New, in the preface of which he denounced the classic Swedish writers with much force and wit, commending Goethe and Tieck to the young poets of the day. In 1808 appeared his trenchant Critique of Schiller, and in 1810 a volume of essays of a polemical kind. In 1813 Hammersköld published a collection of his poems, and in 1815 had to endure the ridicule of Tegnér in his brilliant satire of Hammarspik. In 1818 appeared the first part of Hammarsköld’s chief contribution to literature, his famous Svenska Vitterheten, a history of polite letters in Sweden, a book that was revised and republished after his death by Sondén, in 1833. He is chiefly remembered as a critic; his lyrics and his juvenile tragedy of Prince Gustaf, 1812, are of little value.