LEOPOLD, CARL GUSTAF AF

born March 26, 1756, Stockholm died Nov. 9, 1829, Stockholm Swedish court poet in the service of the enlightened monarch Gustav III and of his successor, the reactionary Gustav IV. After study at Uppsala and Greifswald, Leopold began his career in 1792 with skillful articles and polemical essays propagating the rational ideas of the Enlightenment and parrying the criticism of the younger generation of Romantics. A member of the Swedish Academy from its foundation in 1786, he became, on the death of the poet and critic J.H. Kellgren (1795), the dominant arbiter of classical taste in Sweden. His philosophical, didactic poetry is typified by his ode Frsynen (1793; Providence). Leopold was ennobled in 1809. His last years were saddened by his wife's insanity and by his own blindness.