works. His publication of a
number of epics, dramas, lyrics, and romances made him suddenly famous.
Viewed as a whole, this collection is generally called 'The Book of the
Rose,' but at times 'En Irrande Hind' (A Stray Deer). Of this, the two
dramas, 'Signora Luna' and 'Ramido Marinesco,' contain some of the
pearls of Swedish literature. Uneven in the plan and execution, they are
yet masterly in dialogue, and their dramatic and tragic force is great.
Almquist's imagination showed itself as individual as it is fantastic.
Coming from a man hitherto known as the writer of text-books and the
advocate of popular social ideas, the volumes aroused extraordinary
interest. The author revealed himself as akin to Novalis and Victor
Hugo, with a power of language like that of Atterbom, and a richness of
color resembling Tegner's. Atterbom himself wrote of 'Toernrosens Bok'
that it was a work whose "faults were exceedingly easy to overlook and
whose beauties exceedingly difficult to match."

After this appeared in rapid succession, and written with equal ease,
lyrical, dramatic, educational, poetical, aesthetical, philosophical,
moral, and religious treatises, as well as lectures and studies in
history and law; for Almquist now gave all his time to literary labors.
His novels showed socialistic sympathies, and he put forth newspaper
articles and pamphlets on Socialism which aroused considerable
opposition. Moreover, he delighted in contradictions. One day he wrote
as an avowed Christian, extolling virtue, piety, and Christian
knowledge; the next, he abrogated religion as entirely unnecessary: and
his own explanation of this variability was merely--"I paint so because
it pleases me to paint so, and life is not otherwise."

In 1851 was heard the startling rumor that he was accused of forgery and
charged with murder. He fled from Sweden and disappeared from the
knowledge of men. Going to America, he earned under a fictitious name a
scanty living, and became, it is said, the private secretary of Abraham
Lincoln. In 1866 he found himself again under the ban of the law, his
papers were destroyed, and he escaped with difficulty to Bremen,
where he died.

One of his latest works was his excellent modern novel, 'Det Gar An'
(It's All Right), a forerunner of the "problem novel" of the day. It is
an attack upon conventional marriage, and pictures the helplessness of a
woman in the hands of a depraved man. Its extreme views called out
viole