found foreshadowings of this transformation in certain of his earlier works,—in "The Newly Married Couple," for example, with its delicate analysis, of a common domestic relation, or in "The Fisher Maiden," with its touch of modernity,—but from these suggestions one could hardly have prophesied the enthusiasm and the genial force with which Björnson was to project his personality into the controversial arena of modern life. The series of works which have come from his pen during the past thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver problems which concern society as a whole,—politics, religion, education, the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of the socialist for a reconstruction of the old order. They have also dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,—the relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the responsibility of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer to his dependants, the double standard of morality for men and women, and the duty devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous strain to their offspring. These are some of the themes that have engaged the novelist and dramatist; they have also engaged the public speaker and lay preacher of enlightenment, as well as themes of a more strictly political character, such as the separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the renewal of the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free development of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and the furtherance of peace between the nations. An extensive programme, surely, even in this summary enumeration of its more salient features, but one to which his capacity has not proved unequal, and which he has carried out by the force of his immense energy and superabundant vitality. The burden of all this tendencious matter has caused his art to suffer at times, no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout much of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the genius of the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic environment, sometimes in a lovely lyric, more frequently, however, in the turn of a phrase or the psychological envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the story or the drama.

The great transformation in Björnson's literary manner and choice of subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, in the season of 1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A Bankruptcy." It was two years later that Ibsen sent home from abroad "The Pillars of Society," which marked a similar turning point in his artistic career. It is a curious coincidence that the plays of modern life produced during this second period by these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each case. Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Björnson are, with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879), "The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the Strength I." (1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the Strength II." (1895), "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), "Laboremus" (1901), and "At Storhove" (1902). Since the cessation of Ibsen's activity, Björnson has outrun him in the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the New Wine Blooms" (1909) to the list above given. Besides these fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important volumes of prose fiction during the last thirty-five years. The titles and dates are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), "Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust" (1882), "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways," (1889), "New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" is the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906). The achievement represented by this list is all the more extraordinary when we consider the fact that for the greater part of the thirty-five years which these plays and novels cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker and as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant in the political and social life of his country.

Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in order that our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty, its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice. The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in its leading characteristics, from the figure of a well known conservative journalist in Christiania, although Björnson vigorously maintained that the protraiture was typical rather than personal.

"In various other countries than my own, I have observed the type of journalist who is here depicted. It is characterized by acting upon a basis of sheer egotism, passionate and boundless, and by terrorism in such fashion that it frightens honest people away from every liberal movement, and visits upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."

This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, but the book was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy. "A Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success. Its matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective and brilliant. It was not in vain that Björnson had at different times been the director of three theatres. This play has for its theme the ethics of business life, and more especially the question of the extent to which a man whose finances are embarrassed is justified in continued speculation for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors. Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is lighter and more genial in vein than the author's plays are wont to be, and the element of humor is unusually conspicuous. Jaeger remarks that "A Bankruptcy" did two new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It made money affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and it raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 'A Bankruptcy' that the home made its first appearance upon the stage, the home with its joys and sorrows, with its conflicts and its tenderness."

Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many respects Björnson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form. He had by this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat. He believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition from monarchy. Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of symbol and ceremonial. He had also a special belief that the smaller peoples were better fitted for development in this direction than the larger and more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he thought that the process of growth into full self-government was likely to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races. In the deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in the character of the titular king, an extraordinary piece of psychological analysis. The king, is young, physically delicate, and of highly sensitive organization. When he comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness and the hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked out for him; he realizes also that the very ideal of monarchy, under the conditions of modern European civilization, is a gigantic falsehood. For a time after his accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and revelry, hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that exists between his station and his ideals. But his conscience will give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation of the thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, but of transforming it into something more consonant with truth and the demands of the age. He will become a citizen king, and take for wife a daughter of the people; he will do away with the pomp and circumstance of his