e; he had, in
short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so hemmed in his early
view, and made his way into the intellectual kingdoms of the modern
world that lay beyond. The _Weltgeist_ had appealed to him with its
irresistible behest, just as it appealed at about the same time to
Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, and had made him a man of new interests
and ideals.

One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in certain
of his earlier works,--in "The Newly Married Couple," for example, with
its delicate analysis, of a common domestic relation, or in "The Fisher
Maiden," with its touch of modernity,--but from these suggestions one
could hardly have prophesied the enthusiasm and the genial force with
which Bjoernson was to project his personality into the controversial
arena of modern life. The series of works which have come from his pen
during the past thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver
problems which concern society as a whole,--politics, religion,
education, the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of
the socialist for a reconstruction of the old order. They have also
dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,--the
relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the responsibility
of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer to his dependants,
the double standard of morality for men and women, and the duty
devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous strain to their offspring.
These are some of the themes that have engaged the novelist and
dramatist; they have also engaged the public speaker and lay preacher
of enlightenment, as well as themes of a more strictly political
character, such as the separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the
renewal of the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free
development of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and
the furtherance of peace between the nations. An extensive programme,
surely, even in this summary enumeration of its more salient features,
but one to which his capacity has not proved unequal, and which he has
carried out by the force of his immense energy and superabundant
vitality. The burden of all this tendencious matter has caused his art
to suffer at times, no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout
much of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the genius of
the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic environment, sometimes in a