As is usual in such debates, the attacked and the attacker often changed their ground. John wished to prove to the professor that from his point of view the _Commedia_ was a political pamphlet, but then the professor veered round, adopted the enemy's point of view and said that _he_ should value it as such. Whereupon John answered that it was exactly as such that he designated it, but not as a magnificent poem of everlasting value, which the professor had declared it to be in his lectures. Again the professor changed his ground, and said that the poem should be judged by the standard of the period at which it was composed.
"Exactly so," answered John, "but you have judged it by the standard of our time and all succeeding times, and therefore you are wrong. But even with regard to its own time the work is not an epoch-making one; it is not in advance of its period, but belongs strictly to it, or rather lags behind it. It is a linguistic monument for Italy, nothing more, and should never be read in a Swedish university, because the language is antiquated, and finally because it is too insignificant to be regarded as a link in the development of culture."
The result of the controversy was that John was regarded as shameless and half-cracked.
After this explosion he was exhausted and incapable of work. The whole of the life in a town where he did not feel at home was distasteful to him. His companions advised him to take a thorough rest, for he had worked too hard, and so, as a matter of fact, he had. Various schemes again presented themselves to his mind, but without result. The grey dirty town vexed him, the scenery around depressed him; he lay on a sofa and looked at the illustrations in a German newspaper. Views of foreign scenery had the same effect as music on his mind and he felt a longing to see green trees and blue seas; he wished to go into the country but it was still only February, the sky was as grey as sack-cloth, the streets and roads were muddy. When he felt most depressed, he went to his friend the natural science student. It refreshed him to see his herbarium and microscope, his aquarium and physiological preparations. Most of all he found a pleasure in the society of the quiet, peaceable atheist, who let the world go its way, for he knew that he worked better for the future, in his small measure, than the poet with his excitable outbreaks. He had a little of the artist left in him and painted in oils. To think that he could call up as if by enchantment a green landscape amid the mists of this wintry spring and hang it on his wall!