Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 1).pdf/39



a year after the production of Lady Inger of Östråt—that is to say on the "Foundation Day" of the Bergen Theatre, January 2, 1856—The Feast at Solhoug was produced. The poet himself has written its history in full in the Preface to the second edition (see p. 183). The only comment that need be made upon his rejoinder to his critics has been made, with perfect fairness as it seems to me, by George Brandes in the following passage: "No one who is unacquainted with the Scandinavian languages can fully understand the charm that the style and melody of the old ballads exercise upon the Scandinavian mind. The beautiful ballads and songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn have perhaps had a similar power over German minds; but, as far as I am aware, no German poet has ever succeeded in inventing a metre suitable for dramatic purposes, which yet retained the mediæval ballad's sonorous swing and rich aroma. The explanation of the powerful impression produced in its day by Henrik Hertz's Svend Dyring's House is to be found in the fact that in it, for the first time, the