Historical Miniatures
Excerpt
“A very interesting book, as might be expected, for it
is
Strindberg’s. And I am bold enough to say a book which
should and
must be successful with the public. The writer is not here
concerned
with Sweden, nor with Natural History. A philosopher and poet
here
describes the visions which a study of the history of mankind
has
called up before his inner eye. Julian the Apostate and Peter
the
Hermit appear on the stage, together with Attila and
Luther,
Alcibiades and Eginhard. We see the empires of the Pharaohs
and the
Czars, the Athens of Socrates and the ‘Merry England’
of Henry VIII.
There are twenty brief episodes, and each of them is alive.
So
powerful is the writer’s faculty of vision, that it compels
belief
in his descriptions of countries and men.”