interesting notes, it is obvious, refer only to the closing months of
the period. Ten years before the birth of Ibsen of the greatest poets of
Europe had written words which seem meant to characterize an adolescence
such as his. "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature
imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between,
in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of
life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted; thence proceed mawkishness
and a thousand bitters."

It is easy to discover that Ibsen, from his sixth to his twentieth year,
suffered acutely from moral and intellectual distemper. He was at war--
the phrase is his own--with the little community in which he lived. And
yet it seems to have been, in its tiny way, a tolerant and even friendly
little community. It is difficult for us to realize what life in a
remote coast-town of Norway would be sixty years ago. Connection with
the capital would be rare and difficult, and, when achieved, the capital
was as yet little more than we should call a village. There would,
perhaps, be a higher uniformity of education among the best inhabitants
of Grimstad than we are prepared to suppose. A certain graceful veneer
of culture, an old-fashioned Danish elegance reflected from Copenhagen,
would mark the more conservative citizens, male and female. A fierier
generation--not hot enough, however, to set the fjord on flame--would
celebrate the comparatively recent freedom of the country in numerous
patriotic forms. It is probable that a dark boy like Ibsen would, on the
whole, prefer the former type, but he would despise them both.

He was poor, excruciatingly poor, with a poverty that excluded all
indulgence, beyond the bare necessities, in food and clothes and books.
We can conceive the meagre advance of his position, first a mere
apprentice, then an assistant, finally buoyed up by the advice of