lovely lyric, more frequently, however, in the turn of a phrase or the
psychological envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the
story or the drama.

The great transformation in Bjoernson's literary manner and choice of
subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, in the season of
1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A Bankruptcy." It was two years
later that Ibsen sent home from abroad "The Pillars of Society," which
marked a similar turning point in his artistic career. It is a curious
coincidence that the plays of modern life produced during this second
period by these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each
case. Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Bjoernson are,
with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879),
"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the Strength I."
(1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the Strength II." (1895),
"Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), "Laboremus" (1901), and "At
Storhove" (1902). Since the cessation of Ibsen's activity, Bjoernson
has outrun him in the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the
New Wine Blooms" (1909) to the list above given. Besides these
fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important volumes of
prose fiction during the last thirty-five years. The titles and dates
are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), "Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust"
(1882), "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways,"
(1889), "New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" is
the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906). The achievement
represented by this list is all the more extraordinary when we consider
the fact that for the greater part of the thirty-five years which these
plays and novels cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker
and as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant in the
political and social life of his country.

Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in order that
our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the
greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern
plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty,
its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.
The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in
its leading characteristics, from the figure of a well known
conservative journalist in