crowded theatre. The performance ended with repeated calls for
the author and for the actors. Later in the evening I was serenaded
by the orchestra, accompanied by a great part of the audience. I
almost think that I went so far as to make some kind of speech
from my window; certain I am that I felt extremely happy.

A couple of months later, _The Feast of Solhoug_ was played in
Christiania. There also it was received by the public with much
approbation, and the day after the first performance Bjornson wrote
a friendly, youthfully ardent article on it in the _Morgenblad_. It
was not a notice or criticism proper, but rather a free, fanciful
improvisation on the play and the performance.

On this, however, followed the real criticism, written by the
real critics.

How did a man in the Christiania of those days--by which I mean
the years between 1850 and 1860, or thereabouts--become a real
literary, and in particular dramatic, critic?

As a rule, the process was as follows: After some preparatory
exercises in the columns of the _Samfundsblad_, and after the
play, the future critic betook himself to Johan Dahl's bookshop
and ordered from Copenhagen a copy of J. L. Heiberg's _Prose
Works_, among which was to be found--so he had heard it said--an
essay entitled _On the Vaudeville_. This essay was in due course
read, ruminated on, and possibly to a certain extent understood.
From Heiberg's writings the young man, moreover, learned of a
controversy which that author had carried on in his day with
Professor Oehlenschlager and with the Soro poet, Hauch. And he