grumbled because it would not fit into any recognised form, sanctioned by their preconceived æsthetic principles. I am far from maintaining that the reckless, elusive capriciousness of the poem is an unmixed merit. It would probably have done no harm if, after the first rapture of composition had died away, Ibsen had gone over it and pruned it a little here and there. I can by no means endorse the critics’ sweeping condemnation of the fourth act, which contains some of the most delightful passages in the whole poem; but the first scene of this act is unquestionably shallow in conception and diffuse in style—a piece of satiric journalism rather than of literature. The concluding scenes of the last act, too, would certainly have been none the worse of a little compression. The auction scene (Act V. Sc. 4), though it has a sort of fantastic impressiveness, seems to me hopelessly baffling in its relation both to the outward story and to the inner significance of the poem. Here, and perhaps at some half-dozen other points, one may admit that Ibsen appears to have let his fancy run away with him; but the inert, excessive, or utterly enigmatic passages in _Peer Gynt_ are surely few and brief in comparison with the passages in _Faust_ to which the same epithets may be applied. On the other hand, the scenes of poignant and thrilling and haunting poetry are too many to be severally indicated. The first act, with its inimitable life and movement, Åse’s death-scene, and the Pastor’s speech in the last act, are usually cited as the culminating points of the poem; and there can be no doubt that Åse’s death-scene, at any rate, is one of the supreme achievements of modern drama.[13] But there are several other scenes that I would place scarcely, if at all, lower than these. In point of weird intensity, there is nothing in the poem more marvellous than the Sæter-Girl scene (Act II. Sc. 3); in point of lyric movement, Peer Gynt’s repudiation of Ingrid (Act II. Sc. 1) is incomparable; and in point of sheer beauty and pathos, Solveig’s arrival at the hut (Act III. Sc. 3), with the whole of the scene that follows, stands supreme.[14] For my own part, I reckon the shipwreck scenes at the beginning of the fifth act among the most impressive, as they are certainly not the least characteristic, in the poem. And, in enumerating its traits of undeniable greatness, one must by no means forget the character of Åse, on which Ibsen himself dwelt with justified complacency. There is not a more life-like creation in the whole range of drama.