has been fortunate in his treatment of Lovborg's character. It has
been represented as an absurdity that he would think of reading
abstracts from his new book to a man like Tesman, whom he despises.
But though Tesman is a ninny, he is, as Hedda says, a "specialist"--
he is a competent, plodding student of his subject. Lovborg may
quite naturally wish to see how his new method, or his excursion
into a new field, strikes the average scholar of the Tesman type.
He is, in fact, "trying it on the dog"--neither an unreasonable nor
an unusual proceeding. There is, no doubt, a certain improbability
in the way in which Lovborg is represented as carrying his manuscript
around, and especially in Mrs. Elvsted's production of his rough
draft from her pocket; but these are mechanical trifles, on which
only a niggling criticism would dream of laying stress.

Of all Ibsen's works, _Hedda Gabler_ is the most detached, the most
objective--a character-study pure and simple. It is impossible--or
so it seems to me--to extract any sort of general idea from it. One
cannot even call it a satire, unless one is prepared to apply that
term to the record of a "case" in a work of criminology. Reverting
to Dumas's dictum that a play should contain "a painting, a judgment,
an ideal," we may say the _Hedda Gabler_ fulfils only the first of
these requirements. The poet does not even pass judgment on his
heroine: he simply paints her full-length portrait with scientific
impassivity. But what a portrait! How searching in insight, how
brilliant in colouring, how rich in detail! Grant Allen's remark,
above quoted, was, of course, a whimsical exaggeration; the Hedda
type is not so common as all that, else the world would quickly
come to an end. But particular traits and tendencies of the Hedda
type are very common in modern life, and not only among women.
Hyperaesthesia lies at the root of her tragedy. With a keenly