"caricatures" to
the vexation of various worthy persons. The earliest trace of
talent seems to been in this direction, in the form of lampoons
or "characters," as people called them in the seventeenth century,
sarcastic descriptions of types in which certain individuals could be
recognized. No doubt if these could be recovered, we should find them
rough and artless, but containing germs of the future keenness of
portraiture. They were keen enough, it seems, to rouse great resentment
in Grimstad.

There is evidence to show that the lad had docility enough, at all
events, to look about for some aid in the composition of Norwegian
prose. We should know nothing of it but for a passage in Ibsen's later
polemic with Paul Jansenius Stub of Bergen. In 1848 Stub was an
invalid schoolmaster, who, it appears, eked out his income by giving
instruction, by correspondence, in style. How Ibsen heard of him does
not seem to be known, but when, in 1851, Ibsen entered, with needless
acrimony, into a controversy with his previous teacher about the
theatre, Stub complained of his ingratitude, since he had "taught the
boy to write." Stub's intervention in the matter, doubtless, was limited
to the correction of a few exercises.

Ibsen's own theory was that his intellect and character were awakened
by the stir of revolution throughout Europe. The first political event
which really interested him was the proclamation of the French Republic,
which almost coincided with his twentieth birthday. He was born again,
a child of '48. There were risings in Vienna, in Milan, in Rome. Venice
was proclaimed a republic, the Pope fled to Gaeta, the streets of Berlin
ran with the blood of the populace. The Magyars rose against Jellalic
and his Croat troops; the Czechs demanded their autonomy; in response to
the revolutionary feeling in Germany, Schleswig-Holstein was up in arms.

Each of these events, and others like them, and all occurring in the
rapid months of that momentous year, smote like hammers on the door of
Ibsen's brain, till it quivered with enthusiasm and excitement. The
old brooding languor was at an end, and with surprising clearness and
firmness he saw his pathway cut out before him as a poet and as a man.
The old clouds vanished, and though the social difficulties which hemmed
in his career were as gross as ever, he himself no longer doubted
what was to be his aim in life. The cry of revolution came to him, of
revolution faint indeed and