capable of so mad a fantasy before his intellect had been overthrown by physical suffering and fever.
Thus from step to step, throughout the Second Part, does Ibsen disparage and degrade his hero. It is not for me to discuss the value of the conception of the "third empire" to which poor Julian was sacrificed. But one thing we may say with confidence—namely, that the postulated World-Will does not work by such extremely melodramatic methods as those which Ibsen attributes to it. So far as its incidents are concerned, the Second Part might have been designed by a superstitious hagiologist, or a melodramatist desirous of currying favour with the clergy. Nay, it might almost seem as though the spirit of Gregory of Nazianzus—himself a dramatist after a fashion—had entered into Ibsen during the composition of the play. Certainly, if the World-Will decreed that Julian should be sacrificed in the cause of the larger Imperialism, it made of Ibsen, too, its instrument for completing the immolation.
In translating Kejser og Galilæerer?] I was enabled (by arrangement) to avail myself of occasional aid from Miss Catherine Ray's version of the play, published in 1876. To Miss Ray belongs the credit of having been the first English translator of Ibsen, as Mr. Gosse was his first expositor. The text of my earlier rendering has been very carefully revised for the present edition.
One difficulty has encountered me at every turn. The Norwegians use only one word—Riget (German das Reich)—to cover the two ideas represented in English by "empire" and "kingdom." In most cases "empire" is clearly the proper rendering, since it would be absurd to speak in English of the Roman
