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literary light could sit down and use in the obituary of the greatest poet that Sweden has produced, this derogatory term which he ought to have felt to be improper on purely technical grounds in connection with the name of the departed.

Strindberg had, as we have said, a certain purpose in view when he wrote his A Book about Women. That purpose he attained only in part. He was able to undermine the Nora-cult so that it collapsed, but to get the feministic movement to progress along lines where it could keep company with reason was an impossibility even for him.

Moreover, a comical incident thwarted the whole purpose of Married. A prominent lady took exception to it and ordered an action to be brought against it. This ought to have been directed, of course, against its “immoral tendencies,” against the lack of respect with which the author speaks of Her Majesty the Mistress of the world, i.e. against those features which ten thousand emancipated housewives had found most objectionable in the book. If that had been done Strindberg would without a doubt have performed a much greater service with his book than he did.

But instead of this, the accusers twisted the whole matter by bringing action against Married for defamation of religion. Such a course Strindberg never could have imagined, and it is to this disappointment he refers when he gives vent to his despair in the historical words: “The shot went off, but my gun did not stand it. The pot is bursted.”