poems--notably by _Faust_. In _The Wild Duck_, in _Rosmersholm_,
in _Hedda Gabler_, even in _Little Eyolf_ and _John Gabriel Borkman_,
there remain faint traces of the French leaven which is so strong in
the earlier plays. But _The Master Builder_ had no model and has no
parallel. It shows no slightest vestige of outside influence. It
is Ibsen, and nothing but Ibsen.

W.A.



*FOOTNOTES.

(1)"To the May-sun of a September life--in Tyrol."

(2)"High, painful happiness--to struggle for the unattainable!"

(3)_Neus deutsche Rundschau_, December, 1906, p.1462.

(4)This conception I have worked out at much greater length in an
essay entitled _The Melody of the Master Builder_, appended to
the shilling edition of the play, published in 1893. I there
retell the story, transplanting it to England and making the hero
a journalist instead of an architect, in order to show that (if
we grant the reality of certain commonly-accepted phenomena of
hypnotism) there is nothing incredible or even extravagantly
improbable about it. The argument is far too long to be included
here, but the reader who is interested in the subject may find it
worth referring to.