We have quoted somewhat lengthily from this eulogy of Ibsen in order to render justice both to him and to Nordau. There is no passage in Nordau’s book which displays more insight into dramatic art and a more intelligent appreciation of some of the subtle but marvellous merits of Ibsen’s plays. We should not have thought it possible that so keen an appreciation could have been formed without seeing Ibsen’s pieces acted in the original language. This eulogy becomes all the more valuable when we remember that it emanates from one of Ibsen’s opponents—from a man who would fain restrain Ibsen from writing at all, and who evidently has not paid any attention to the slow but important social struggle which Ibsen so frequently illustrates. Most people who have read these and other acknowledgments on the part of Nordau of Ibsen’s talent, will be struck with the reckless manner in which Nordau defeats his own object. He wishes to warn the world against “degenerates” of Ibsen’s type, and at the same time praises him as few writers have been praised, seemingly without considering that in this manner he inspires thousands of young writers with the ambition to be degenerates as Ibsen is. To the average reader Nordau suggests the idea of the impossibility of reconciling so much power, genius, talent, and craftsmanship with decayed mental faculties. This all the more as Ibsen’s pieces are financial successes, and he consequently shows a solid capacity for the management of his own affairs, which, as Nordau has already told us, and every alienist would tell us, is the safest test of a sound brain. The conclusion seems inevitable that Nordau is either utterly wrong when he sees all these merits in Ibsen’s work, or else when he considers him to be degenerate. In examining the grounds on which Nordau strives to establish his theory of degeneracy we shall no doubt find that the latter alternative is the true one. Nordau first impeaches Ibsen’s reputation for realism, but takes this term in its most literal sense. The stage has its limitations, and the dramatist must have a certain licence in the creating of his situations. Ibsen is not called a realist because all that he represents on the stage is in closer conformity with reality than the representations of practically any other dramatist ever were, but because his characters, besides being individually true to nature, are types—strongly coloured types, it may be, but not too strongly coloured to be understood by an average audience. In a piece not intended to be played the characters may be more delicately moulded, but when they are to be grasped in a few flashes before the footlights they must, like the statue intended for an elevated position, be hewn in bold proportions.