this _apologia pro
vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have
the modern Bjoernson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at
once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd
Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness
that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether
thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by
the bitterest opposition.

Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five years
following upon the publication of "The King." The story of "Magnhild,"
planned several years earlier, represents Bjoernson's return to fiction
after a long dramatic interlude. There are still peasants in this
story, but they are different from the figures of the early tales, and
the atmosphere of the work is modern. It turns upon the question of
the mutual duties of husband and wife, when love no longer unites them.
The solution seems to lie in separation when union has thus become
essentially immoral. "Captain Mansana" is a story of Italian life,
based, so the author assures us, on actual characters and happenings
that had come within the range of his observation during his stay
abroad. Its interest does not lie in any particular problem, but
rather in the delineation of the titular figure, a strong and impetuous
person whose character suggests that of Ferdinand Lassalle, as the
author himself points out to us in a prefatory note. "Dust" is a
pathetic little story having for its central idea what seems like a
pale reflection of the idea of Ibsen's "Ghosts," which had appeared a
few months before. It is the dust of the past that settles upon our
souls, and clogs their free action. The special application of this
thought is to the religious training of children:--

"When you teach children that the life here below is nothing to the
life above, that to be visible is nothing in comparison with being
invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison with being
dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life properly, or to
love life, to gain courage, strength for work, and love of country."

In the play, "Leonarda," and again in the play, "A Glove," the author
recurs to the woman question; in the one case, his theme is the
attitude of society toward the woman of blemished reputation; in the
other, its attitude toward the man who in his relation with women has
violated the moral law. "Le