specimen of impressionist work as
_Hedda Gabler_ being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have
been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaim "This is
poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger--whose criticism, like
his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural
Wool"--to find that you were mistaken and that it is really
pamphleteering.

Yet Enforcing a Moral.

To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text. That is
to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not
to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture,
is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main
thing in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_. In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own
solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in
_Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too.

The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the
poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being
given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous
hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation
of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow
who says,

"Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot,
But _do_ it----. No, that's past my understanding!"

--who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the
"instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is
the very last that will preserve self.

The Story.

This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially
whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders
self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When
Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to
his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before
Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad
of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to
thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer
deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman
while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the
wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on
the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his
major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an
ir