Page:Selected Orations Swedish Academy 1792.djvu/15

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AN ORATION BY GUSTAVUS III.
15

learning by that patriotic ardour which illustrates every action of his life, unites to the beauty of style the utmost delicacy of taste, and upon whose talents I mould still further enlarge, did I not apprehend that the tribute of gratitude, which truth demands at my hands, would be thought a studied encomium upon him, to whom I am indebted for my education.

To unite, in an advanced age, the most social temper of mind and the most elegant taste for composition, with the direction of a political department, which requires more industry than abilities, more accuracy than genius—a department which appears even calculated to extinguish these qualities, is a singular circumstance, a circumstance which proves more powerfully than any encomium, how much that senator,[1] to whom I now allude, is likely to ornament and instruct the academy. The effects of his genius, preserved in the transactions of the kingdom, have already procured him a reputation, which, however, he is desirous of sharing with this society.

No person, however, can have a better title to become a member of an institution, destined to purify the Swedish language, than a nobleman[2] who has so frequently addressed the general assemblies of the kingdom; who, with so elegant an arrangement, so luminous a perspicuity, and so irresistible an energy, has so often delivered his sentiments to his

  1. The senator Count Hermansson, who was twice President of the Exchequer.
  2. The senator and field-marshal Count A. Fersen, who has been three times Speaker to the Diet.

fellow-