ity where he graduated in 1852. As a
boy, his earliest biographer tells us, he was fully determined to be
a poet--and, naturally, the foremost poet of his time!--but, as years
passed, he gained a soberer estimate of his possibilities. At the
University he was one of a group of kindred spirits with eager literary
leanings, and it did not take him long to gain a certain footing in the
world of journalism. His work for the first year or two was mainly in
the domain of dramatic criticism, but the creative instinct was growing
in him. A youthful effort of his--a drama entitled Valborg--was actually
accepted for production at the Christiania theatre, and the author,
according to custom, was put on the "free list" at once. The experience
he gained, however, by assiduous attendance at the theatre so convinced
him of the defects in his own bantling, that he withdrew it before
performance--a heroic act of self-criticism rare amongst young authors.

His first serious literary efforts were some peasant tales, whose
freshness and vividness made an immediate and remarkable impression and
practically ensured his future as a writer, while their success inspired
him with the desire to create a kind of peasant "saga." He wrote of what
he knew, and a delicate sense of style seemed inborn in him. The best
known of these tales are Synnoeve Solbakken (1857) and Arne (1858). They
were hailed as giving a revelation of the Norwegian character, and the
first-named was translated into English as early as 1858. He was thus
made known to (or, at any rate, accessible to) English readers many
years before Ibsen, though his renown was subsequently overshadowed,
out of their own country, by the enormous vogue of the latter's works.
Ibsen, too, has been far more widely translated (and is easier to
translate) into English than Bjornson. Much of the latter's finest work,
especially in his lyrical poetry and his peasant stories, has a charm of
diction that it is almost impossible to reproduce in translation. Ibsen
and Bjornson, who inevitably suggest comparison when either's work is
dealt with, were closely bound by friendship as well as admiration until
a breach was caused by Bjornson's taking offence at a supposed attack
on him in Ibsen's early play The League of Youth, Bjornson considering
himself to be lampooned in the delineation of one of the characters
thereof. The breach, however, was healed many years later, when, at the
time of the bitter attacks