Ibsen s Early Life 371 



it spoken — its essentially bourgeois cliaracter. AVe 

 have already said how, when literature revived in the 

 country, men were at first led to go back for inspiration 

 to the great days of Norse history. Lloreover, Europe 

 generally was in the beginning of the romantic revival. 

 Thus the early Norse literature is romantic too ; and 

 when it is lyric or pastoral it is full of enthusiasm 

 for this land of heroes, for the beauty of the Norse 

 scenery, the constant interchange of hill and valley. 

 As Ibsen's critic and biographer, Jpeger, says, when 

 you read these poems you think that Norway is 

 never to be seen save in the summer ; or if a winter 

 picture do intervene it is a picture only of the 

 delights of the season, of sledge drives, of the beauty of 

 the forests under their burden of snow. In a word, the 

 literature of the revival of letters in Norway is mildly 

 romantic, and above all it is optimistic. Into the midst 

 of this circle of writers there stepped the strange figure 

 of this new poet and satirist. He is scarcely a Norse- 

 man. At any rate he has a large immixture of Danish 

 and Scottish blood. His name Ibsen is Danish. Born in 

 1828 in the small, though ancient, town of Skien (near 

 Laurvik), and passing his youth in the smaller one of 

 Grimstad (where, like Keats, he was apprenticed to an 

 apothecary), Ibsen really knew little of Norway in his 

 early years, save its narrow bourgeois life. These towns 

 are on the southeiii coast of Norway, I'ar away from its 

 grander scenery. At the age of twenty Ibsen went to 

 Christiania to go through the University course. At a 

 later time he lived in Bergen. But though this writer 

 had in his early years none of the same sort of inspira- 

 tion which produced the poems of the old skalds of 



