each of his works printed since he first published
with Hegel in Copenhagen--a connection which he preserved without a
breach until the end--have been stated since his death. They contain
some points of interest. After 1876 Hegel ventured on large editions
of each new play, but they went off at first slowly. _The Lady from the
Sea_ was the earliest to appear, at once, in an issue of 10,000 copies,
which was soon exhausted. So great, however, had the public interest in
Ibsen become in 1894 that the edition of 10,000 copies of _Little Eyolf_
was found quite inadequate to meet the first order, and it was enlarged
to 15,000, all of which were gone in a fortnight. This circulation in so
small a reading public as that of Denmark and Norway was unprecedented,
and it must be remembered that the simultaneous translations into most
of the languages of Europe are not included.

_Little Eyolf_, which was written in Christiania during the spring and
summer of 1894, was issued, according to Ibsen's cometary custom, as the
second week of December rolled round. The reception of it was stormy,
even in Scandinavia, and led to violent outbursts of controversy. No
work from the master's pen had roused more difference of opinion among
the critics since the bluster over _Ghosts_ fourteen years before. Those
who prefer to absolute success in the creation of a work of art the
personal flavor or perfume of the artist himself were predisposed to
place _Little Eyolf_ very high among his writings. Nowhere is he more
independent of all other influences, nowhere more intensely, it may even
be said more distressingly, himself. From many points of view this play
may fairly be considered in the light of a _tour de force_. Ibsen--one
would conjecture--is trying to see to what extremities of agile
independence he can force his genius. The word "force" has escaped me;
but it may be retained as reproducing that sense of a difficulty not
quite easily or completely overcome which _Little Eyolf_ produces.
To mention but one technical matter; there are but four characters,
properly speaking, in the play--since Eyolf himself and the Rat-Wife
are but illustrations or symbolic properties--and of these four, one
(Borgheim) is wholly subsidiary. Ibsen, then, may be said to have
challenged imitation by composing a drama of passion with only three
characters in it. By a process of elimination this has been done
by Aeschylus (in the _Agamemnon_), by Racine (in _Phe*dr