AT STOCKHOLM 
195 
and soon showed himself a strong disputant, who took 
the author to task for not observing the rules which 
Christian love and good manners prescribed. Rosen 
.vainly interrupted more and more heatedly, declaring 
that all the arguments that Beronius brought forward 
were “ scommata ” (derisive and wounding ex¬ 
pressions), inept, childish, unbecoming in a theologian, 
so far forgetting himself as to apply the epithet of 
“ opponens impudissimus ” to Beronius, at which 
some of the students showed their displeasure by 
shouting. Even Wallerius, calm at first, afterwards 
gave vent to his feelings by stamping and uttering 
derisive cries. The students took sides, and shouted 
approval or the reverse. Beronius, who seems to 
have preserved an unruffled temper, went on ignoring 
the Dean’s order to be silent, and turning to the 
students, quoted with unequalled effect from the 
“ Orbis eruditi,” begging them to remember that 
Linnaeus was an honour to their country. He related 
his struggles against poverty in his student days, and 
his constant trust in God’s wonderful providence, to 
which speech the students listened in silence with 
bowed heads. 
When Beronius ceased, Mag. Carl Clingenberg 
continued the discussion, but declared himself only 
a friend of Linnaeus and not an expert. The contest 
between the speaker and Rosen increased in heat, and 
the students then began to stand on the benches, 
jumped, stamped, laughed and shrieked, whilst the 
Latin abuse flowed on. Said one who was present, 
“ Never did I hear such an amount of abuse in Latin, 
nor so coarse.” It went so far that many in the 
audience tore up their copies of the thesis, and after 
the end of the Act, the floor was covered with frag¬ 
ments. It was a complete academic scandal, in which 
all those concerned were more or less to blame. 
Naturally after the storm were heavings as of the 
sea. Rosen, certainly, during the disputation had 
gone so far, that the audience suspected him of having 
