who is appointed by the poet to open Brand's eyes. His spiritual pride has been his downfall, for while thinking of others he has not "found salvation for his own soul." The avalanche which she starts overwhelms them both, but not before he hears a voice answer his prayer--does mankind's will, then, count for nothing. "He is the God of Love," is the reply. Havelock Ellis thinks that "we have to look back to the scene in the death of Lear" to attain a like imaginative height in literature. Ibsen has set his character in a most life-like _milieu_. His people are painted with a broad, firm hand. The mayor, the schoolmaster, the doctor, the sexton, are living men, and their worldly natures are clearly indicated. Prophet Brand is, though Ibsen told Georg Brandes that he could have made him sculptor or politician, as well as priest. Sören Kierkegaard and his revolt from orthodoxy may have supplied the poet for his portrait. He, however, more than half hints that it was Gustav Lammers who was the original of Brand, a fiery nonconformist man who built his own church and seceded from the current evangelicism. But, after all, Brand is Ibsen's own portrait, is a mask for Ibsen himself. The beauty, grim as it is, and the picturesque variety of this great poem almost match its ethical grandeur. The Ice Church is too cold for humanity, Brand's ideal too inhuman. Yet he has willed, he has not wholly failed. His error was in its application--in not willing enough for himself. "Be what you are," he exhorts the weak Einar, "whatever it is, but be it out and out" No compromise with the powers of evil--yet Brand's doctrine led to his destruction. Not to will is a crime, to will too much leads to madness. What is the answer to this perplexing problem? Ibsen does not give it. In his phraseology "to be oneself is to lose oneself." And Brand, who was for "All or Nothing," severed his dearest ties and finally was destroyed himself. The complexity must not repel the student. Mr. C. H. Herford's translation with the illuminating introduction is well worth the reading. He thinks that the "Norwegian priest is tortured ... as was Hamlet; Hamlet's power of resolve is depleted by the restless discursiveness of his intellect; Brand's failure in sympathetic insight hangs together with his peremptory self-assertion.... Unless appearances wholly deceive, Shakespeare drew in Hamlet the triumph of impulses which agitated without dominating his nature." Ibsen had _lived_ Brand, he confesses it.