a Swede, and "the most pessimistic of living pessimists." "His
many volumes are long records of unending crises of soul." Now we are quite willing to read the works of a pessimistic philosophy provided the philosopher be of sufficiently commanding intellect to furnish something that repays us for the essentially disagree- able character of the study. Otherwise we do not like people who write many volumes of autobiography about the crises in their souls, and we see no trace of remarkable genius in this work. Strindberg, it appears, brought realism into Sweden, and the word "realism," which used to suggest a detailed portraiture of prostitution, now begins to connote the literary presentment of insanity. We dislike and distrust the choice of madness as a subject for literature. If a man can make superb poetry out of it, as Shakespeare did, the result amply justifies him, but for a realist to undertake such a theme seems absolutely inconsistent. We do not for a moment believe that any man would have acted as the father does in this squalid drama; but the dramatist may answer that a madman is capable of anything. Realism under these conditions may rival the wildest extravagances of melo- drama, yet if it does, it loses its appeal as realism, its convincing correspondence with experience. Moreover, an action is attri- buted to a perfectly sane person which is grossly incredible. The wife who does not live happily with her husband takes steps to have him confined as a lunatic ; this is an agree- able motive which has commended itself to several writers of late, and the lady's behaviour is possible enough. But a strait- waistcoat has to be put upon the husband, and the man's old nurse, the one human being whose love for him is unquestioned, con- sents to be the agent who decoys him (in a perfectly improbable manner) into putting it on. If this play be a fair specimen of Strindberg's work we have no desire to see more of it ; and if Strindberg poses as a man of genius we should have no hesitation in asserting that he is a charlatan. Ibsen has a disagreeable mind, but there is a deal in it besides what is disagreeable. A number of people seem to believe that to rival Ibsen it is only needful to be sufficiently squalid.
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