among the tombs on the Via Latina, or would loiter for hours and hours along the Appian Way. It took him weeks to summon energy to Visit S. Pietro in Vincoli, although he knew that Michelangelo’s “Moses” was there, and though he was weary with longing to see it. All the tense chords of Ibsen’s nature were loosened. His soul was recovering, through a long and blissful convalescence, from the aching maladies of its youth.
He took some part in the society of those Scandinavian writers, painters and sculptors who gathered in Rome through the years of their distress. But only one of them attracted him strongly, the young Swedish lyrical poet, Count Carl Snoilsky, then the hope and already even the glory of his country. There was some quaint diversity between the rude and gloomy Norwegian dramatist, already middle-aged, and the full-blooded, sparkling Swedish diplomatist of twenty-three, rich, flattered, and already as famous for his fashionable bonnes fortunes as Byron. But two things Snoilsky and Ibsen had in common, a passionate enthusiasm for their art, and a rebellious attitude towards their immediate precursors in it. Each, in his own way, was the leader of a new school. The friendship of Ibsen and Snoilsky was a permanent condition for the rest of their lives, for it was founded on a common basis.
