Nevertheless, it must not be thought that Björnson's first works were hailed with the unanimous applause which people now often profess to believe they received. There are many individuals to be found to-day in the Scandinavian countries, to whom it is satisfactory to point out some work of Björnson which they have always praised, in order that they may, with all the greater appearance of impartiality, censure his later creations. His first novels and dramas formed too strong a contrast with all that the public had been accustomed to admire to be received without opposition, and many people of literary culture who had been in hearty sympathy with the previously prevailing poesy, could not but feel their æsthetic creed to be violated by them. In Denmark, indeed, a great and rich school of poetry, whose influence had extended far into Norway, was on the eve of its decline. The sonorous pathos of Oehlenschläger still rang with its musical accents in every ear, his representations of the antiquity and early middle ages of the North seemed to men of the old school, even if outwardly less true, at least inwardly more true than the writings of Björnson; the unsurpassed elegance and grace of Henrik Hertz had enfeebled their taste for primitive simplicity, and finally people missed in the new Norwegian poetry the lofty philosophic culture which Heiberg had accustomed the public to require of the poet and to find in his works. I recollect distinctly how strange and novel "Synnöve Solbakken" and "Arne" seemed to me on their first appearance.