pass on later to the Christiania University where he graduated in
1852. As a boy, his earliest biographer tells us, he was fully
determined to be a poet--and, naturally, the foremost poet of
his time!--but, as years passed, he gained a soberer estimate
of his possibilities. At the University he was one of a group
of kindred spirits with eager literary leanings, and it did not
take him long to gain a certain footing in the world of
journalism. His work for the first year or two was mainly in
the domain of dramatic criticism, but the creative instinct
was growing in him. A youthful effort of his--a drama entitled
Valborg--was actually accepted for production at the Christiania
theatre, and the author, according to custom, was put on the
"free list" at once. The experience he gained, however, by
assiduous attendance at the theatre so convinced him of the
defects in his own bantling, that he withdrew it before
performance--a heroic act of self-criticism rare amongst young
authors.

His first serious literary efforts were some peasant tales, whose
freshness and vividness made an immediate and remarkable
impression and practically ensured his future as a writer, while
their success inspired him with the desire to create a kind of
peasant "saga." He wrote of what he knew, and a delicate sense of
style seemed inborn in him. The best known of these tales are
Synnove Solbakken (1857) and Arne (1858). They were hailed as
giving a revelation of the Norwegian character, and the first-
named was translated into English as early as 1858. He was thus
made known to (or, at any rate, accessible to) English readers
many years before Ibsen, though his renown was subsequently
overshadowed, out of their own country, by the enormous vogue of