"He had been the favorite of the nation and the King, content
with the mere necessities of life, free from every care, not
even desiring the immortality of fame; moderate in everything
except in enthusiasm, he had enjoyed to the full what he
wanted,--friendship, wine, and music. Now he lived to see the
shadows fall over his life and genius. Feeling that his last
hour was not far off, he sent word to his nearest friends
that a meeting with them as in old times would be dear to
him. He came to meet them almost a shadow, but with his old
friendly smile; even in the toasts he took part, however
moderately, and then he announced that he would let them
'hear Bellman once more.' The spirit of song took possession
of him, more powerfully than ever, and all the rays of his
dying imagination were centred in an improvised good-by song.
Throughout an entire night, under continual inspiration, he
sang his happy life, his mild King's glory, his gratitude to
Providence, who let him be born among a noble people in this
beautiful Northern country,--finally he gave his grateful
good-by to every one present, in a separate strophe and
melody expressing the peculiar individuality of the one
addressed and his relation to the poet. His friends begged
him with tears to stop, and spare his already much weakened
lungs; but he replied, 'Let us die, as we have lived, in
music!'--emptied his last glass of champagne, and began at
dawn the last verse of his song."
After this he sang no more. A few days later he went to bed, lingered
for ten weeks, and died on the 11th of February, 1795, aged fifty-four
years. He was buried in Clara cemetery.
Bellman's critics have given themselves much trouble about his personal
character. Some have thought him little better than a coarse drunkard;
others again have made him out a cynic who sneered at the life he
depicted; again others have laid the weight on the note found in 'Drink
out thy glass,' and have seen only the underlying sad pathos of his
songs. His contemporaries agree that he was a man of great consideration
for form, and assert that if there are coarse passages in his songs it
is because they only could express what he depicted. All coarseness was
foreign to his nature; he was reserved and somewhat shy, and only in the
company of his chosen few did he open his heart.
His critics have, moreover, assiduously sought the moral of his works.
If any was intended, it may have been that of fighting sentimentality
and all false feeling; but it seems more in accordance with his entire
life that he sang out of the fullness of his heart, as a bird sings,
simply because it must sing.
[Illustration: Signature: OLGA FLINCH]