Hamsun has returned, as it were, to the scene of his passionate youth, but in altered guise. He plays no part himself now, but is an onlooker, a stander-by, chronicling, as from a cloistered aloofness, yet with kindly wisdom always, the little things that matter in the lives of those around him. Wisdom and kindliness, sympathy and humour and understanding, these are the dominant notes of the new phase. _Sværmere_ ends happily--for it is a story of other people’s lives. So also with _Benoni_ and _Rosa_ at the last. And so surely has the author established his foothold on the new ground that he can even bring in Edvarda, the “Iselin” figure from _Pan_, once more, thus linking up his brave and lusty comedies of middle age with the romantic tragedies of his youth, making a comprehensive pageant-play of large-hearted humanity. Meantime, the effect upon himself is seen--and avowed. Between _Sværmere_ and _Benoni_ comes the frankly first-personal narrative of a vagabond who describes himself, upon interrogation, as “Knut Pedersen”--which is two-thirds of Knut Pedersen Hamsun--and hailing from Nordland--which embraces Lofoten. It does not need any showing of papers, however, to establish the identity of Knut Pedersen, vagabond, with the author of _Pan_. The opening words of the book (_Under Høststjærnen_) are enough. “Indian summer, mild and warm ... it is many years now since I knew such peace. Twenty or thirty years maybe--or maybe it was in another life. But I have felt it some time, surely, since I go about now humming a little tune; go about rejoicing, loving every straw and every stone, and feeling as if they cared for me in return....” This is the Hamsun of _Pan_. But Hamsun now is a greater soul than in the days when Glahn, the solitary dweller in the woods, picked up a broken twig from the ground and held it lovingly, because it looked poor and forsaken; or thanked the hillock of stone outside his hut because it stood there faithfully, as a friend that waited his return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a _geste_ of innocent rogue-errantry; its place is with _Lavengro_ and _The Cloister and the Hearth_, in that ancient, endless order of tales which link up age with age and land with land in the unaltering, unfrontiered fellowship of the road that kept the spirit of poetry alive through the Dark Ages.