tter of course that the poet was greatly cheered by the
acceptance of his play, and he immediately set to work on another,
_Olaf Liljekrans_; but this he put aside when _Kaempehoeien_ practically
failed. He wrote a satirical comedy called _Norma_. He endeavored to get
certain of his works, dramatic and lyric, published in Christiania, but
all the schemes fell through. It is certain that 1851 began darkly for
the young man, and that his misfortunes encouraged in him a sour and
rebellious temper. For the first and only time in his life he meddled
with practical politics. Vinje and he--in company with a charming
person, Paul Botten-Hansen (1824-69), who flits very pleasantly
through the literary history of this time--founded a newspaper called
_Andhrimner_, which lasted for nine months.

One of the contributors was Abildgaard, who, as we have seen, lived
in the same house with Ibsen. He was a wild being, who had adopted the
republican theories of the day in their crudest form. He posed as the
head of a little body whose object was to dethrone the king, and to
found a democracy in Norway. On July 7, 1851, the police made a raid
upon these childish conspirators, the leaders being arrested and
punished with a long imprisonment. The poet escaped, as by the skin of
his teeth, and the warning was a lifelong one. He never meddled with
politics any more. This was, indeed, as perhaps he felt, no time for
rebellion; all over Europe the eruption of socialism had spent itself,
and the docility of the populations had become wonderful.

The discomfort and uncertainty of Ibsen's position in Christiania made
him glad to fill a post which the violinist, Ole Bull, offered him
during autumn. The newly constituted National Theatre in Bergen (opened
Jan. 2, 1850) had accepted a prologue written for an occasion by the
young poet, and on November 6, 1851, Ibsen entered into a contract by
which he bound himself go to Bergen "to assist the theatre as dramatic
author." The salary was less than L70 a year, but it was eked out by
travelling grants, and little as it might be, it was substantially more
than the nothing-at-all which Ibsen had been enjoying in Christiania.

It is difficult to imagine what asset could be bought to the treasuries
of a public theatre by a youth of three and twenty so ill-educated, so
empty of experience and so ill-read as Ibsen was in 1851. His crudity,
we may be sure, passed belief. He was the novice who has not learned h