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FROM the sickbed Strindberg rose tried and purified. He employed his convalescence by recording his experiences of the preceding period in the two autobiographical works Inferno and Legends, and to his religious broodings he said farewell in that magnificent piece of symbolism: Jacob Wrestles.

At the same time that he recovered his strength, he matured. He is no longer the fanatic chastiser swinging the knout-whip over himself and his time. He has himself learned from life, and he once more mounts that literary Olympus which had stood vacant during his absence, and becomes the calm, serious-minded teacher who, from the phenomena of antagonizing conflict, points out to mortals those laws of fife which have forcibly shaped the course of events.

To be sure he began his new dramatic period with a mystery play, Advent; but in his very next work, he is in the midst of the lofty style, in the golden period of his old age. It is in and through his historical dramas that he became the great poet once more.

At this epoch, I again met Strindberg. He had hidden himself down in Lund^[1] so securely that not even his