ed to generous sentimentalists in Norway, and
Ibsen's defence of England, which he supported in further communications
with irony and courage, made a great sensation, and threw cold water on
the pro-Boer sentimentalists. In Holland, where Ibsen had a wide
public, this want of sympathy for Dutch prejudice raised a good deal of
resentment, and Ibsen's statements were replied to by the fiery young
journalist, Cornelius Karel Elout, who even published a book on the
subject. Ibsen took dignified notice of Elout's attacks (December 9,
1900), repeating his defence of English policy, and this was the latest
of his public appearances.

He took an interest, however, in the preparation of the great edition of
his _Collected Works_, which appeared in Copenhagen in 1901 and 1902,
in ten volumes. Before the publication of the latest of these, however,
Ibsen had suffered from an apoplectic stroke, from which he never wholly
recovered. It was believed that any form of mental fatigue might now be
fatal to him, and his life was prolonged by extreme medical care. He was
contented in spirit and even cheerful, but from this time forth he was
more and more completely withdrawn from consecutive interest in what was
going on in the world without. The publication, in succession, of his
juvenile works (_Kaempehoejen_, _Olaf Liljekrans_, both edited by Halvdan
Koht, in 1902), of his _Correspondence_, edited by Koht and Julius
Elias, in 1904, of the bibliographical edition of his collected works by
Carl Naerup, in 1902, left him indifferent and scarcely conscious. The
gathering darkness was broken, it is said, by a gleam of light in
1905; when the freedom of Norway and the accession of King Hakon were
explained to him, he was able to express his joyful approval before the
cloud finally sank upon his intelligence.

During his long illness Ibsen was troubled by aphasia, and he expressed
himself painfully, now in broken Norwegian, now in still more broken
German. His unhappy hero, Oswald Alving, in _Ghosts_, had thrilled the
world by his cry, "Give me the sun, Mother!" and now Ibsen, with glassy
eyes, gazed at the dim windows, murmuring "Keine Sonne, keine Sonne,
keine Sonne!" At the table where all the works of his maturity had
been written the old man sat, persistently learning and forgetting the
alphabet. "Look!" he said to Julius Elias, pointing to his mournful
pothooks, "See what I am doing! I am sitting here and learning my
letters--my _letter