INTRODUCTION.
The publication of Brand, in March 1866, brought
Ibsen fame (in Scandinavia) and relieved him from
the immediate pressure of poverty. Two months later
the Storthing voted him a yearly "poet-pension" of
£90; and with this sum, as he wrote to the Minister
who had been mainly instrumental in furthering his
claim, he felt "his future assured," so that he could
henceforth "devote himself without hindrance to his
calling." This first glimpse of worldly prosperity, no
doubt, brought with it the lighter mood which distinguishes
Peer Gynt from its predecessor. To call it
the gayest of Ibsen's works is not, perhaps, to say
very much. Its satire, indeed, is bitter enough; but
it is not the work of an unhappy man. The character
of Peer Gynt, and many of his adventures, are conceived
with unmistakable gusto. Some passages
even bear witness to an exuberance of animal spirits
which reminds one of Ben Jonson's saying with regard
to Shakespeare—"aliquando sufflaminandus erat."
The summer of 1866 Ibsen spent at Frascati, in the Palazzo Gratiosi, where he lived "most comfortably and cheaply." He found Frascati and Tusculum
