ch (_Salomon de Caus_, 1855; _Lord William Russell_, 1857)
was, for instance, an irritating step in the wrong direction. The
new-born school of prose fiction, with Bjoernson as its head (_Synnoeve
Solbakken_, 1857; _Arne_, 1858), with Camilla Collett's _Prefect's
Daughters_, 1855, as its herald; with Oestgaard's sketches of peasant
life and humors in the mountains (1852)--all this was a direct menace
to the popularity of the national stage, offering an easy and alluring
alternative for home-loving citizens. Was it certain that the classic
Danish, which alone Ibsen cared to write, would continue to be the
language of the cultivated classes in Norway? Here was Ivar Aasen (in
1853) showing that the irritating landsmaal could be used for prose and
verse.

Wherever he turned Ibsen saw increased vitality, but in shapes that were
either useless or antagonistic to himself, and all that was harsh and
saturnine in his nature awakened. We see Ibsen, at this moment of his
life, like Shakespeare in his darkest hour, "in disgrace with fortune
and men's eyes," unappreciated and ready to doubt the reality of his own
genius; and murmuring to himself:--

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope.
With what I most enjoy contented least.

How little his greatness was perceived in the Christiania literary
coteries may be gathered from the little fact that the species of
official anthology of _Modern Norwegian Poets_, published in 1859,
though it netted the shallows of national song very closely, contained
not a line by the author of the lovely lyrics in _The Feast at Solhoug_.
It was at this low and miserable moment that Ibsen's talent suddenly
took wings; he conceived, in the summer of 1858, what finally became,
five years later, his first acknowledged masterpiece, and perhaps
the most finished of all his writings, the sculptural tragedy of _The
Pretenders_.

_The Pretenders_ (_Kongsemnerne_, properly stuff from which Kings can be
made) is the earliest of the plays of Ibsen in which the psychological
interest is predominant, and in which there is no attempt to disguise
the fact. Nothing that has since been written about this drama, the
very perfection of which is baffling to criticism, has improved upon the
impression which Georg Brandes received from it when he first read it
forty years ago. The passage is classic, an