stad he had but himself to consult, and the mind of a young poet who has not yet enjoyed any generous communication with life is invariably sentimental and romantic. The critics of the North have expended a great deal of ingenuity in trying to prove that Ibsen exposed his own temperament and character in the course of Catilina. No doubt there is a great temptation to indulge in this species of analysis, but it is amusing to note that some of the soliloquies which have been pointed out as particularly self-revealing are translated almost word for word out of Sallust. Perhaps the one passage in the play which is really significant is that in which the hero says:—
If but for one brief moment I could flame
And blaze through space, and be a falling star;
If only once, and by one glorious deed,
I could but knit the name of Catiline
With glory and with deathless high renown,—
Then should I blithely, in the hour of conquest,
Leave all, and hie me to an alien shore,
Press the keen dagger gayly to my heart,
And die; for then I should have lived indeed.
This has its personal interest, since we know, on the evidence of his sister, that such was the tenor of Ibsen’s private talk about himself at that precise time.
