versified parts of the dialogue of both _The Feast
at Solhoug_ and _Olaf Liliekrans_ are written in that imitation
of the tone and style of the heroic ballad, of which Hertz was
the happily-inspired originator. There seems to me to be no
depreciation whatever of Ibsen in the assertion of Hertz's right
to rank as his model. Even the greatest must have learnt from
some one."

But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparent
in the style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows no
less clearly that influence of the French plot-manipulators which
we found so unmistakably at work in _Lady Inger_. Despite its
lyrical dialogue, _The Feast at Solhoug_ has that crispiness of
dramatic action which marks the French plays of the period. It may
indeed be called Scribe's _Bataille de Dames_ writ tragic. Here,
as in the _Bataille de Dames_ (one of the earliest plays produced
under Ibsen's supervision), we have the rivalry of an older and a
younger woman for the love of a man who is proscribed on an unjust
accusation, and pursued by the emissaries of the royal power. One
might even, though this would be forcing the point, find an analogy
in the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong and
determined character) has in Scribe's comedy a cowardly suitor,
while in Ibsen's tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband.
In every other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yet
it seems to me far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscence
of the _Bataille de Dames_ may have contributed to the shaping of
_The Feast at Solhoug_ in Ibsen's mind. But more significant than
any resemblance of theme is the similarity of Ibsen's whole method
to that of the French school--the way, for instance, in which
misunderstandings are kept up through a careful avoidance of the
use of proper names, and the way in which a cup of poison, prepared
for one person, comes into the hands of another person, is, as a
matter of fact, drunk by no one but occasions the acutest agony to
the would-be poisoner. All this ingenious dovetailing of incidents
and working-up of misunderstandings, Ibsen unquestionably learned
from the French. The French language, indeed, is the only one which
has a word--_quiproquo_--to indicate the class of misunderstanding
which, from _Lady Inger_ down to the _League of Youth_, Ibsen
employed without scruple.

Ibsen's first visit to the home of his future wife took place after
the