Strong as the beast of prey whose name twice occurs in his,[1] muscular, without the slightest trace of corpulence, of an athletic build, he looms up vigorously in my mind, with his massive head, his firmly compressed lips, and his sharp, penetrating gaze from behind his spectacles. His exterior reveals the son of a preacher, his voice, play of features and gestures betray more of the actor's talent than poets usually possess. It would be impossible for literary hostilities to overthrow this man, and for him there never existed that greatest danger to authors (a danger which for a long time menaced his great rival, Henrik Ibsen), namely: that of having his name shrouded in silence. Even as a very young author (as a theatrical critic and political writer), he had entered the field of literature with such an eagerness for combat, that a rumbling noise arose about him wherever he appeared. Like his own Thorbjörn in "Synnöve Solbakken" he displayed in early youth the combative tendency of the athlete, but like his Sigurd in "Sigurd's Flight," he fought not merely to practise his strength, but from genuine, although often mistaken love of truth and justice. At all events, he understood thoroughly how to attract attention. An author may possess great and rare gifts, and yet, through lack of harmony between his own personal endowments and the national characteristics or the degree of development of his people, may long be prevented from attaining a brilliant success. Many of the world's greatest minds have suffered from this cause. Many, as Byron, Heine, and Henrik Ibsen, have left their native land; many more who have remained at home have felt forsaken by their compatriots. With Björnson the case is quite different. He has never, it is true, been peacefully recognized by the entire Norwegian people; at first, because the form he used was too new and unfamiliar; later, because his ideas were of too challenging a nature for the ruling, conservative, and highly orthodox circles of the land; even at the present time he is pursued by the press of the Norwegian government and by the leading official society, with a fury which is as little choice in its selection of means as is in other countries the exasperation felt by the champions of thrones and altars. In spite of all this, Björnstjerne Björnson has his people behind him and about him, as perhaps no other poet, unless it be Victor Hugo. When his name is mentioned it is equivalent to hoisting the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his faults, in his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears the stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness and his naïveté, his open-heartedness as a man, and the terseness of his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Norwegian popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the one-sidedness and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen that has driven