iting, but breaks down surprisingly at awkward intervals, and
displays a hopeless inconsistency between his own nature and the medium
in which he is forcing himself to write. As a proof that the similarity
between _The Feast at Solhoug_ and _Svend Dyring's House_ is accidental,
it has been pointed out that Ibsen produced his own play on the Bergen
stage in January, 1856, and revived Hertz's a month later. It might,
surely, be more sensibly urged that this fact shows how much he was
captivated by the charm of the Danish dramatist.

The sensible thing, in spite of Ibsen's late disclaimer, is to suppose
that, in the consciousness of his crudity and inexperience as a writer,
he voluntarily sat at the feet of the one great poet whom he felt had
most to teach him. On the boards at Bergen, _The Feast at Solhoug_ was
a success, while _Olaf Liljekrans_ was a failure; but neither incident
could have meant very much to Ibsen, who, if there ever was a poet who
lived in the future, was waiting and watching for the development of his
own genius. Slowly, without precocity, without even that joy in strength
of maturity which comes to most great writers before the age of thirty,
he toiled on in a sort of vacuum. His youth was one of unusual darkness,
because he had not merely poverty, isolation, citizenship of a remote
and imperfectly civilized country to contend against, but because his
critical sense was acute enough to teach him that he himself was still
unripe, still unworthy of the fame that he thirsted for. He had not
even the consolation which a proud confidence in themselves gives to the
unappreciated young, for in his heart of hearts he knew that he had as
yet done nothing which deserved the highest praise. But his imagination
was expanding with a steady sureness, and the long years of his
apprenticeship were drawing to a close.

Ibsen was now, like other young Norwegian poets, and particularly
Bjoernson, coming into the range of that wind of nationalistic
inspiration which had begun to blow down from the mountains and to
fill every valley with music. The Norwegians were discovering that they
possessed a wonderful hidden treasure in their own ancient poetry and
legend. It was a gentle, clerically minded poet--himself the son of a
peasant--Joergen Moe (1813-82), long afterwards Bishop of Christianssand,
who, as far back as 1834, began to collect from peasants the folk-tales
of Norway. The childlike innocence and playful humor of