y fought with sword and battle-axe, and their song rang the more
boldly because they knew how to strike up another tune--the fierce song
of the sword. In modern times Wergeland and Welhaven have demonstrated
not only the pugnacity, but also the noble courage of their ancestry by
espousing the cause of opposing parties during the struggle for national
independence.

Those who demand that literature shall be untinged by any tendency or
strong conviction will do well to eschew all the subsequent works of
Bjoernson. They might perhaps put up with the brief novel "Magnhild,"
which is tolerably neutral in tone, though it is the least enjoyable of
all Bjoernson's works. It gives the impression that the author is half
afraid of his subject (which is an illicit love), and only dares to
handle it so gingerly as to leave half the tale untold. The short,
abrupt sentences which seemed natural enough when he was dealing with
the peasants, with their laconic speech and blunt manners, have a forced
and unnatural air when applied to people to whom this style of language
is foreign. Moreover, these condensed sentences are often vague, full of
innuendo, and mysterious as hieroglyphics. It is as if the author, in
the consciousness of the delicacy of his theme, had lost the bold
security of touch which in his earlier works made his meaning
unmistakable.

The drama "The King" (1877) is an attack upon the monarchical principle
in its political as well as its personal aspect. It is shown how
destructive the royal prerogative is and must be to the king as an
individual; how the artificial regard which hedges him in, interposing
countless barriers between the truth and him, makes his relations to his
surroundings false and deprives him of the opportunity for
self-knowledge which normal relations supply. Royalty is therefore a
curse, because it robs its possessor of the wholesome discipline of life
which is the right of every man that is born into the world.

Furthermore, there is an obvious intention to show that the monarchy,
being founded upon a lie, is incapable of any real adaptation to the
age, and reconciliation with modern progress. The king in the play is a
young, talented, liberal-minded man, who is fully conscious of the
anomaly of his position, and determined to save his throne by stripping
it of all mediaeval and mythological garniture. He dreams of being a
"folk-king," the first citizen of a free people, a kind of hereditary
pres