defame, and utterly destroy a political opponent. The following passages
may be worth quoting:

"Most of the successful politicians nowadays win not by their own
greatness but by the paltriness of the rest."

"Here is a fine specimen of a fossil. It is a piece of a palm-leaf, ...
which was found in a stratum of Siberian rock.... Thus one must become
in order to endure the ice-storms. Then one is not harmed. But your
brother! In him lived yet the whole murmuring, singing palm-forest....
As regards you, it remains to be seen whether you can get all humanity
in you completely killed.... But who would at that price be a
politician?... That one must be hardened is the watchword of all
nowadays. Not only army officers but physicians, merchants, officials
are to be hardened or dried up; ... hardened for the battle of life, as
they say. But what does that mean? We are to expel and evaporate the
warmth of the heart, the fancy's yearning, ... before we are fit for
life.... No, I say, it is those very things we are to preserve. That's
what we have got them for."

Bjoernson's increasing Radicalism and his outspoken Socialistic
sympathies had by this time alienated a large portion of the
Scandinavian public. The cry was heard on all sides that he had ceased
to be a poet, and had become instead a mere political agitator. I cannot
deny myself the pleasure of quoting Bjoernson's reply when at his request
a friend repeated to him the opinion which was entertained of him in
certain quarters:

"Oh, yes," he cried, with a wrathful laugh, "don't I know it? You must
be a poet! You must not mingle in the world's harsh and jarring tumult.
They have a notion that a poet is a longhaired man who sits on the top
of a tower and plays upon a harp while his hair streams in the wind.
Yes, a fine kind of poet is that! No, my boy, I am a poet, not primarily
because I can write verse (there are lots of people who can do that) but
by virtue of seeing more clearly, and feeling more deeply, and speaking
more truly than the majority of men. All that concerns humanity
concerns me. If by my song or my speech I can contribute ever so little
toward the amelioration of the lot of the millions of my poorer
fellow-creatures, I shall be prouder of that than of the combined
laurels of Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe."

This is the conception of a poet which was prevalent in Norway in the
olden time. The scalds of the sagas were warriors as well as singers.
The