“With Björnson, however, begins the true Gothic school, about which Tegner (the Matthew Arnold of the North) blundered so beautifully. He is content with the simplest elements, yet takes care to assimilate them exquisitely. He is not a Milton, capable of producing a Christian epic; nor a Dante, capable of contructing and all-embracing allegory of personal suffering; nor a Goethe, capable of founding a science of culture. He is merely an idyllic thinker, exhibiting some creative fortitude, and wealthy in delicate suggestion.”
Anonymous, ‘BJORNSON’, Spectator, London:1866
