rtraits at all, they are composite portraits. Even when it
seems pretty clear that the initial impulse towards the creation of a
particular character came from some individual, the original figure is
entirely transmuted in the process of harmonisation with the dramatic
scheme. We need not, therefore, look for a definite prototype of Hedda;
but Dr. Brandes shows that two of that lady's exploits were probably
suggested by the anecdotic history of the day.

Ibsen had no doubt heard how the wife of a well-known Norwegian
composer, in a fit of raging jealousy excited by her husband's prolonged
absence from home, burnt the manuscript of a symphony which he had just
finished. The circumstances under which Hedda burns Lovborg's manuscript
are, of course, entirely different and infinitely more dramatic;
but here we have merely another instance of the dramatisation or
"poetisation" of the raw material of life. Again, a still more painful
incident probably came to his knowledge about the same time. A beautiful
and very intellectual woman was married to a well-known man who had been
addicted to drink, but had entirely conquered the vice. One day a mad
whim seized her to put his self-mastery and her power over him to the
test. As it happened to be his birthday, she rolled into his study a
small keg of brandy, and then withdrew. She returned some time after
wards to find that he had broached the keg, and lay insensible on the
floor. In this anecdote we cannot but recognise the germ, not only of
Hedda's temptation of Lovborg, but of a large part of her character.

"Thus," says Dr. Brandes, "out of small and scattered traits of reality
Ibsen fashioned his close-knit and profoundly thought-out works of art."

For the character of Eilert Lovborg, again, Ibsen seem unquestionably
to have borrowed several traits from a definite original. A young Danish
man of letters, whom Dr. Brandes calls Holm, was an enthusiastic admirer
of Ibsen, and came to be on very friendly terms with him. One day Ibsen
was astonished to receive, in Munich, a parcel addressed from Berlin by
this young man, containing, without a word of explanation, a packet of
his (Ibsen's) letters, and a photograph which he had presented to Holm.
Ibsen brooded and brooded over the incident, and at last came to the
conclusion that the young man had intended to return her letters and
photograph to a young lady to whom he was known to be attached, and had
in a fit of aberration mixe