Not being "a hardy Norseman," and having neither a reading nor
speaking acquaintance with the Norse language, I am unable to decide
abstruse points on which such learned doctors disagree; but not being
altogether without some practical experience of English and French
drama, I venture to call in question not only the dramatic ability of
the dramatist himself, but also, after perhaps allowing him some merit
as a type-writer or character-sketcher, to assert that the style and
matter of most of his work is always tiresome, frequently childish,
and the subject often morbid and unhealthy; and, further, that his
method is tedious to the last degree of boredom; for, as a writer, if
I may judge him fairly by his translators, he is didactic and prosy,
and never more tedious than when his dialogue is intended to be at its
very crispest. As a playwright his construction is faulty. Here and
there he gives expression to pretty ideas, reminding me (still judging
by the translation) of TOM ROBERTSON, not when the latter was in his
happiest vein, but when laboriously striving to make his puppets talk
in a sweetly ingenuous manner.
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