historical drama, there is a much nearer approach to poetry. The
stagecraft is still too obvious; effect follows effect like
thunder-claps; there is melodrama in the tragedy; but the play is, above
all, the working-out of a few deep ideas, and in these ideas there is
both beauty and wisdom.

It was with the publication of _Brand_ that Ibsen became famous, not
only in his own country, but throughout Europe. The poem has been
seriously compared, even in England, with _Hamlet_; even in Germany with
_Faust_. A better comparison is that which Mr. Gosse has made with
Sidney Dobell's _Balder_. It is full of satire and common-sense, of
which there is little enough in _Balder_: but not _Balder_ is more
abstract, or more inhuman in its action. Types, not people, move in it;
their speech is doctrine, not utterance; it is rather a tract than a
poem. The technique of the verse, if we can judge it from the brilliant
translation of Professor Herford, which reads almost everywhere like an
original, is more than sufficient for its purpose; all this
argumentative and abstract and realistic material finds adequate
expression in a verse which has aptly been compared with the verse of
Browning's _Christmas-eve and Easter-day_. The comparison may be carried
further, and it is disastrous to Ibsen. Browning deals with hard matter,
and can be boisterous; but he is never, as Ibsen is always, pedestrian.
The poet, though, like St. Michael, he carry a sword, must, like St.
Michael, have wings. Ibsen has no wings.

But there is another comparison by which I think we can determine more
precisely the station and quality of _Brand_ as poetry. Take any one of
the vigorous and vivid statements of dogma, which are the very kernel of
the poem, and compare them with a few lines from Blake's _Everlasting
Gospel_. There every line, with all its fighting force, is pure poetry;
it was conceived as poetry, born as poetry, and can be changed into no
other substance. Here we find a vigorous technique fitting striking
thought into good swinging verse, with abundance of apt metaphor; but
where is the vision, the essence, which distinguishes it from what,
written in prose, would have lost nothing? Ibsen writes out of the
intellect, adding fancy and emotion as he goes; but in Blake every line
leaps forth like lightning from a cloud.

The motto of _Brand_ was 'all or nothing'; that of _Peer Gynt_ 'to be
master of the situation.' Both are studies of egoism, in the fi