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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: Victor Hugo - -Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne - -Release Date: October 10, 2019 [EBook #60466] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTOR HUGO *** - - - - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Internet Archive.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/hugo_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - -<h3>VICTOR HUGO</h3> - -<h4>BY</h4> - -<h3>ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE</h3> - -<h4>NEW YORK</h4> - -<h4>WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY</h4> - -<h4>1886</h4> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - - - -<p style="margin-left: 20%; font-size: 0.8em;"> -<a id="TABLE_DES_MATIERES"></a><a>TABLE DES MATIÈRES</a> -<br /> -<a href="#THE_WORK_OF_VICTOR_HUGO">THE WORK OF VICTOR HUGO</a><br /> -<a href="#LA_LEGENDE_DES_SIECLES"><i>LA LÉGENDE DES SIÈCLES</i></a></p> - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - - - -<h4><a id="THE_WORK_OF_VICTOR_HUGO">THE WORK OF VICTOR HUGO</a></h4> - - -<p>In the spring of 1616 the greatest Englishman of all time passed away -with no public homage or notice, and the first tributes paid to his -memory were prefixed to the miserably garbled and inaccurate edition of -his works which was issued seven years later by a brace of players under -the patronage of a brace of peers. In the spring of 1885 the greatest -Frenchman of all time has passed away amid such universal anguish and -passion of regret as never before accompanied the death of the greatest -among poets. The contrast is of course not wholly due to the -incalculable progress of humanity during the two hundred and sixty-nine -years which divide the date of our mourning from the date of -Shakespeare's death: nor even to the vast superiority of Frenchmen to -Englishmen in the quality of generous, just, and reasonable gratitude -for the very highest of all benefits that man can confer on mankind. For -the greatest poet of this century has been more than such a force of -indirect and gradual beneficence as every great writer must needs be. -His spiritual service has been in its inmost essence, in its highest -development, the service of a healer and a comforter, the work of a -redeemer and a prophet. Above all other apostles who have brought us -each the glad tidings of his peculiar gospel, the free gifts of his -special inspiration, has this one deserved to be called by the most -beautiful and tender of all human titles—the son of consolation. His -burning wrath and scorn unquenchable were fed with light and heat from -the inexhaustible dayspring of his love—a fountain of everlasting and -unconsuming fire. We know of no such great poet so good, of no such good -man so great in genius: not though Milton and Shelley, our greatest -lyric singer and our single epic poet, remain with us for signs and -examples of devotion as heroic and self-sacrifice as pure. And therefore -it is but simply reasonable that not those alone should mourn for him -who have been reared and nurtured on the fruits of his creative spirit: -that those also whom he wrought and fought for, but who know him only as -their champion and their friend—they that cannot even read him, but -remember how he labored in their cause, that their children might fare -otherwise than they—should bear no unequal part in the burden of this -infinite and worldwide sorrow.</p> - -<p>For us, who from childhood upwards have fostered and fortified whatever -of good was born in us—all capacity of spiritual work, all seed of -human sympathy, all powers of hope and faith, all passions and -aspirations found loyal to the service of duty and of love—with the -bread of his deathless word and the wine of his immortal song, the one -thing possible to do in this first hour of bitterness and stupefaction -at the sense of a loss not possible yet to realize, is not to declaim -his praise or parade our lamentation in modulated effects or efforts of -panegyric or of dirge: it is to reckon up once more the standing account -of our all but incalculable debt. A brief and simple summary of his -published works may probably lay before the student some points and some -details not generally familiar to the run of English readers: and I know -not what better service might be done them than to bring into their -sight such aspects of the most multiform and many-sided genius that ever -wrought in prose or verse as are least obvious and least notorious to -the foreign world of letters.</p> - -<p>Poet, dramatist, novelist, historian, philosopher, and patriot, the -spiritual sovereign of the nineteenth century was before all things and -above all things a poet. Throughout all the various and ambitious -attempts of his marvelous boyhood—criticism, drama, satire, elegy, -epigram, and romance—the dominant vein is poetic. His example will -stand forever as the crowning disproof of the doubtless more than -plausible opinion that the most amazing precocity of power is a sign of -ensuing impotence and premature decay. There was never a more brilliant -boy than Victor Hugo; but there has never been a greater man. At any -other than a time of mourning it might be neither unseasonable nor -unprofitable to observe that the boy's early verse, moulded on the -models of the eighteenth century, is an arsenal of satire on -revolutionary principles or notions which might suffice to furnish forth -with more than their natural equipment of epigram a whole army of -reactionary rhymesters and pamphleteers. But from the first, without -knowing it, he was on the road to Damascus: if not to be struck down by -sudden miracle, yet by no less inevitable a process to undergo a no less -unquestionable conversion. At sixteen he wrote for a wager in the space -of a fortnight the chivalrous and heroic story of <i>Bug-Jargal</i>; -afterwards recast and reinformed with fresh vigor of vitality, when the -author had attained the maturer age of twenty-three. His tenderness and -manliness of spirit were here made nobly manifest: his originality and -ardor of imagination, wild as yet and crude and violent, found vent two -years later in <i>Han d'Islande.</i> But no boyish work on record ever -showed more singular force of hand, more brilliant variety of power: -though the author's criticism ten years later admits that "il n'y a dans -<i>Han d'Islande</i> qu'une chose sentie, l'amour du jeune homme; qu'une -chose observée, l'amour de la jeune fille." But as the work of a boy's -fancy or invention, touched here and there with genuine humor, terror, -and pathos, it is not less wonderful than are the author's first odes -for ease and force and freshness and fluency of verse imbued with simple -and sincere feeling, with cordial and candid faith. And in both these -boyish stories the hand of a soldier's son, a child of the camp, reared -in the lap of war and cradled in traditions of daring, is evident -whenever an episode of martial adventure comes in among the more -fantastic, excursions of adolescent inventiveness. But it is in the -ballads written between his twenty-second and his twenty-seventh year -that Victor Hugo first showed himself, beyond all question and above all -cavil, an original and a great poet. <i>La Chasse du Burgrave</i> and -<i>Le Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean</i> would suffice of themselves to -establish that. The fire, the music, the force, the tenderness, the -spirit of these glorious little poems must needs, one would think, -impress even such readers as might be impervious to the charm of their -exquisitely vigorous and dexterous execution. Take for example this one -stanza from the ballad last mentioned:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">La cohue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Flot de fer,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Frappe, hue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Remplit l'air,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et, profonde,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tourne et gronde</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme une onde</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur la mer.</span></p> - - -<p>It will of course, I should hope, be understood once for all that when I -venture to select for special mention any special poem of Hugo's I do -not dream of venturing to suggest that others are not or may not be -fully as worthy of homage, or that anything of this incomparable -master's work will not requite our study or does not demand our -admiration; I do but take leave to indicate in passing some of those -which have been to me especially fruitful of enduring delight, and still -are cherished in consequence with a peculiar gratitude.</p> - -<p>At twenty-five the already celebrated lyric poet published his -magnificent historic drama of <i>Cromwell</i>: a work sufficient of -itself to establish the author's fame for all ages in which poetry and -thought, passion and humor, subtle truth of character, stately -perfection of structure, facile force of dialogue and splendid eloquence -of style, continue to be admired and enjoyed. That the author has -apparently confounded one earl of Rochester with another more famous -bearer of the same title must not be allowed to interfere with the -credit due to him for wide and various research. Any dullard can point -the finger at a slip here and there in the history, a change or an error -of detail or of date: it needs more care to appreciate the painstaking -and ardent industry which has collected and fused-together a great mass -of historic and legendary material, the fervent energy of inspiration -which has given life, order, and harmony to the vast and versatile -design. As to the executive part of the poem, the least that can be said -by any competent judge of that matter is that Molière was already -equalled and Corneille was already excelled in their respective -provinces of verse by the young conqueror whose rule was equal and -imperial over every realm of song. The comic interludes or episodes of -the second and third acts, so admirably welded into the structure or -woven into the thread of the action, would suffice to prove this when -collated with the seventeenth scene of the third act and the great -speech of Cromwell in the fifth.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 21.5em;">Arrêtez!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que veut dire ceci? Pourquoi cette couronne?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que veut-on que j'en fasse? et qui donc me la donne?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Est-ce un rêve? Est-ce bien le bandeau que je vois?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De quel droit me vient-on confondre avec les rois?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui mêle un tel scandale à nos pieuses fêtes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quoi! leur couronne, à moi qui fais tomber leurs têtes?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'est-on mépris au but de ces solennités?—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Milords, messieurs, anglais, frères, qui m'écoutez,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je ne viens point ici ceindre le diadème,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais retremper mon titre au sein du peuple même,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Rajeunir mon pouvoir, renouveler mes droits.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'écarlate sacrée était teinte deux fois.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cette pourpre est au peuple, et, d'une âme loyale,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je la tiens de lui.—Mais la couronne royale!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand l'ai-je demandée? Et qui dit que j'en veux?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je ne donnerais pas un seul de mes cheveux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De ces cheveux blanchis à servir l'Angleterre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour tous les fleurons d'or des princes de la terre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ôtez cela d'ici! Remportez, remportez</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce hochet, ridicule entre les vanités!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">N'attendez pas qu'aux pieds je foule ces misères!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'ils me connaissent mal, les hommes peu sincères</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui m'osent affronter jusqu'à me couronner!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai reçu de Dieu plus qu'ils ne peuvent donner,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La grâce inamissible; et de moi je suis maître.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Une fois fils du ciel, peut-on cesser de l'être?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De nos prospérités l'univers est jaloux.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que me faut-il de plus que le bonheur de tous?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je vous l'ai dit. Ce peuple est le peuple d'élite.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'Europe de cette île est l'humble satellite.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout cède à notre étoile; et l'impie est maudit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il semble, à voir cela, que le Seigneur ait dit:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Angleterre! grandis, et sois ma fille aînée.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entre les nations mes mains t'ont couronnée;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sois donc ma bien-aimée, et marche à mes côtés.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il déroule sur nous d'abondantes bontés;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Chaque jour qui finit, chaque jour qui commence,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ajoute un anneau d'or à cette chaîne immense.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On croirait que ce Dieu, terrible aux philistins,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À comme un ouvrier composé nos destins;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que son bras, sur un axe indestructible aux âges,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De ce vaste édifice a scellé les rouages,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Œuvre mystérieuse, et dont ses longs efforts</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour des siècles peut-être ont monté les ressorts.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ainsi tout va. La roue, à la roue enchaînée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mord de sa dent de fer la machine entraînée;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les massifs balanciers, les antennes, les poids,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Labyrinthe vivant, se meuvent à la fois;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'effrayante machine accomplit sans relâche</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa marche inexorable et sa puissante tâche;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et des peuples entiers, pris dans ses mille bras,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Disparaîtraient broyés, s'ils ne se rangeaient pas.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et j'entraverais Dieu, dont la loi salutaire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nous fait un sort à part dans le sort de la terre!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'irais, du peuple élu foulant le droit ancien,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mettre mon intérêt à la place du sien!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pilote, j'ouvrirais la voile aux vents contraires!</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 28%;">(<i>Hochant la tête.</i>)</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Non, je ne donne pas cette joie aux faux frères.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vieux navire anglais est toujours roi des flots.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le colosse est debout. Que sont d'obscurs complots</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Contre les hauts destins de la Grande-Bretagne?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'est-ce qu'un coup de pioche aux flancs d'une</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">montagne?</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 15%;">(<i>Promenant des yeux de lynx autour de lui.</i>)</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Avis aux malveillants! on sait tout ce qu'ils font.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le flot est transparent, si l'abîme est profond.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On voit le fond du piège où rampe leur pensée.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La vipère parfois de son dard s'est blessée;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au feu qu'on allumait souvent on se brûla;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et les yeux du Seigneur vont courant çà et là.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui du peuple et des rois a signé le divorce?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Moi.—Croit-on donc me prendre à cette vaine amorce?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un diadème!—Anglais, j'en brisais autrefois.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sans en avoir porté, j'en connais bien le poids.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quitter pour une cour le camp qui m'environne?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Changer mon glaive en sceptre et mon casque en</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">couronne?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Allons! suis-je un enfant? me croit-on né d'hier?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne sais-je pas que l'or pèse plus que le fer?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">M'édifier un trône! Eh! c'est creuser ma tombe.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cromwell, pour y monter, sait trop comme on en tombe.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et d'ailleurs, que d'ennuis s'amassent sur ces fronts</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui se rident sitôt, hérissés de fleurons!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Chacun de ces fleurons cache une ardente épine.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La couronne les tue; un noir souci les mine;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle change en tyran le mortel le plus doux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et, pesant sur le roi, le fait peser sur tous.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le peuple les admire, et, s'abdiquant lui-même,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Compte tous les rubis dont luit le diadème;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais comme il frémirait pour eux de leur fardeau,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'il regardait le front et non pas le bandeau!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Eux, leur charge les trouble, et leurs mains souveraines</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De l'état chancelant mêlent bientôt les rênes.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ah! remportez ce signe exécrable, odieux!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce bandeau trop souvent tombe du front aux yeux.—</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 30%;">(<i>Larmoyant.</i>)</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et qu'en ferais-je enfin? Mal né pour la puissance,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis simple de cœur et vis dans l'innocence.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si j'ai, la fronde en main, veillé sur le bercail,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si j'ai devant l'écueil pris place au gouvernail,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai dû me dévouer pour la cause commune.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais que n'ai-je vieilli dans mon humble fortune!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que n'ai-je vu tomber les tyrans aux abois,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À l'ombre de mon chaume et de mon petit bois!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Hélas! j'eusse aimé mieux ces champs où l'on respire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le ciel m'en est témoin, que les soins de l'empire;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et Cromwell eût trouvé plus de charme cent fois</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À garder ses moutons qu'à détrôner des rois!</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 32%;">(<i>Pleurant.</i>)</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que parle-t-on de sceptre? Ah! j'ai manqué ma vie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce morceau de clinquant n'a rien qui me convie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ayez pitié de moi, frères, loin d'envier</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Votre vieux général, votre vieil Olivier.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je sens mon bras faiblir, et ma fin est prochaine.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Depuis assez longtemps suis-je pas à la chaîne?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis vieux, je suis las; je demande merci.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">N'est-il pas temps qu'enfin je me repose aussi?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Chaque jour j'en appelle à la bonté divine.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et devant le Seigneur je frappe ma poitrine.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que je veuille être roi! Si frêle et tant d'orgueil!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce projet, et j'en jure à côté du cercueil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il m'est plus étranger, frères, que la lumière</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du soleil à l'enfant dans le sein de sa mère!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Loin ce nouveau pouvoir à mes vœux présenté!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je n'en accepte rien,—rien que l'hérédité.</span></p> - - -<p>The subtlety and variety of power displayed in the treatment of the -chief character should be evident alike to those who look only on the -upright side of it and those who can see only its more oblique aspect. -The Cromwell of Hugo is as far from the faultless monster of Carlyle's -creation and adoration as from the all but unredeemed villain of -royalist and Hibernian tradition: he is a great and terrible poetic -figure, imbued throughout with active life and harmonized throughout by -imaginative intuition: a patriot and a tyrant, a dissembler and a -believer, a practical humorist and a national hero.</p> - -<p>The famous preface in which the batteries of pseudo classic tradition -were stormed and shattered at a charge has itself long since become a -classic. That the greatest poet was also the greatest prose-writer of -his generation there could no longer be any doubt among men of any -intelligence: but not even yet was more than half the greatness of his -multitudinous force revealed. Two years later, at the age of -twenty-seven, he published the superb and entrancing <i>Orientales</i>: -the most musical and many-colored volume of verse that ever had -glorified the language. From <i>Le Feu du Ciel</i> to <i>Sara la -Baigneuse</i>, from the thunder-peals of exterminating judgment to the -flute-notes of innocent girlish luxury in the sense of loveliness and -life, the inexhaustible range of his triumph expands and culminates and -extends. Shelley has left us no more exquisite and miraculous piece of -lyrical craftsmanship than <i>Les Djinns</i>; none perhaps so rich in -variety of modulation, so perfect in rise and growth and relapse and -reiterance of music.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Murs, ville,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Et port,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Asile</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">De mort,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Mer grise</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Où brise</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">La brise,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Tout dort.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans la plaine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Naît un bruit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est l'haleine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De la nuit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle brame</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme une âme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'une flamme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toujours suit.</span></p> - - -<p>Then the terrible music of the flight of evil spirits—"troupeau -lourd et rapide"—grows as it were note by note and minute by -minute up to its full height of tempest, and again relapses and recedes -into the subsiding whisper of the corresponsive close.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce bruit vague</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui s'endort,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est la vague</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur le bord;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est la plainte</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Presque éteinte</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'une sainte</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour un mort.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On doute</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La nuit...</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'écoute:—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout fuit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout passe;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'espace</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Efface</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le bruit.</span></p> - - -<p>And here, like Shelley, was Hugo already the poet of freedom, a champion -of the sacred right and the holy duty of resistance. The husk of a -royalist education, the crust of reactionary misconceptions, had already -begun to drop off; not yet a pure republican, he was now ripe to receive -and to understand the doctrine of human right, the conception of the -common weal, as distinguished from imaginary duties and opposed to -hereditary claims.</p> - -<p>The twenty-eighth year of his life, which was illuminated by the -issue of these passionate and radiant poems, witnessed also the opening -of his generous and lifelong campaign or crusade against the principle -of capital punishment. With all possible reverence and all possible -reluctance, but remembering that without perfect straightforwardness and -absolute sincerity I should be even unworthier than I am to speak of -Victor Hugo at all, I must say that his reasoning on this subject seems -to me insufficient and inconclusive: that his own radical principle, the -absolute inviolability of human life, the absolute sinfulness of -retributive blood-shedding, if not utterly illogical and untenable, is -tenable or logical only on the ground assumed by those quaintest though -not least pathetic among fanatics and heroes, the early disciples of -George Fox. If a man tells you that supernatural revelation has -forbidden him to take another man's life under all and any -circumstances, he is above or beyond refutation; if he says that -self-defense is justifiable, and that righteous warfare is a patriotic -duty, but that to exact from the very worst of murderers, a parricide or -a poisoner, a Philip the Second or a Napoleon the Third, the payment of -a life for a life—or even of one infamous existence for whole -hecatombs of innocent lives—is an offense against civilization and -a sin against humanity, I am not merely unable to accept, but -incompetent to understand his argument. We may most heartily agree with -him that France is degraded by the guillotine, and that England is -disgraced by the gallows, and yet our abhorrence of these barbarous and -nauseous brutalities may not preclude us from feeling that a dealer (for -example) in professional infanticide by starvation might very properly -be subjected to vivisection without anæsthetics, and that all manly and -womanly minds not distorted or distracted by prepossessions or -assumptions might rationally and laudably rejoice in the prospect of -this legal and equitable process. "The senseless old law of retaliation" -(<i>la vieille et inepte loi du talion</i>) is inept or senseless only -when the application of it is false to the principle: when justice in -theory becomes unjust in practice. Another stale old principle or -proverb—"abusus non tollit usum"—suffices to confute some of -the arguments—I am very far from saying, all—adduced or -alleged by the ardent eloquence of Victor Hugo in his admirable -masterpiece of terrible and pathetic invention—<i>Le dernier jour -d'un condamné</i>, and subsequently in the impressive little history of -<i>Claude Gueux</i>, in the famous speech on behalf of Charles Hugo when -impeached on a charge of insult to the laws in an article on the -punishment of death, and in the fervent eloquence of his appeal on the -case of a criminal executed in Guernsey, and of his protest addressed to -Lord Palmerston against the horrible result of its rejection. That -certain surviving methods of execution are execrable scandals to the -country which maintains them, he has proved beyond all humane or -reasonable question; and that all murderers are not alike inexcusable is -no less indisputable a proposition; but beyond these two points the most -earnest and exuberant advocacy can advance nothing likely to convince -any but those already converted to the principle that human life must -never be taken in punishment of crime—that there are not criminals -whose existence insults humanity, and cries aloud on justice for mercy's -very sake to cut it off.</p> - -<p>The next year (1830) is famous forever beyond all others in the history -of French literature: it was the year of <i>Hernani</i>, the date of -liberation and transfiguration for the tragic stage of France. The -battle which raged round the first acted play of Hugo's, and the triumph -which crowned the struggles of its champions, are not these things -written in too many chronicles to be for the thousandth time related -here? And of its dramatic and poetic quality what praise could be -uttered that must not before this have been repeated at least some -myriads of times? But if there be any mortal to whom the heroic scene of -the portraits, the majestic and august monologue of Charles the Fifth at -the tomb of Charles the Great, the terrible beauty, the vivid pathos, -the bitter sweetness of the close, convey no sense of genius and utter -no message of delight, we can only say that it would simply be natural, -consistent, and proper for such a critic to recognize in Shakespeare a -barbarian, and a Philistine in Milton.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, if we are to obey the perhaps rather childish impulse of -preference and selection among the highest works of the highest among -poets, I will avow that to my personal instinct or apprehension <i>Marion -de Lorme</i> seems a yet more perfect and pathetic masterpiece than even -<i>Hernani</i> itself. The always generous and loyal Dumas placed it at the -very head of his friend's dramatic works. Written, as most readers (I -presume) will remember, before its predecessor on the stage, it was -prohibited on the insanely fatuous pretext that the presentation of King -Louis the Thirteenth was an indirect affront to the majesty of King -Charles the Tenth. After that luckless dotard had been driven off his -throne, it was at once proposed to produce the hitherto interdicted play -before an audience yet palpitating with the thrill of revolution and -resentment. But the chivalrous loyalty of Victor Hugo refused to accept -a facile and factitious triumph at the expense of an exiled old man, -over the ruins of a shattered old cause. The play was not permitted by -its author to enter till the spring of the following year on its -inevitable course of glory. It is a curious and memorable fact that the -most tender-hearted of all great poets had originally made the hero of -this tragedy leave the heroine unforgiven for the momentary and -reluctant relapse into shame by which she had endeavored to repurchase -his forfeited life; and that Prosper Mérimée should have been the -first, Marie Dorval the second, to reclaim a little mercy for the -penitent. It is to their pleading that we owe the sublime pathos of the -final parting between Marion and Didier.</p> - -<p>In one point it seems to me that this immortal masterpiece may -perhaps be reasonably placed, with <i>Le Roi s'amuse</i> and <i>Ruy -Blas</i>, in triune supremacy at the head of Victor Hugo's plays. The -wide range of poetic abilities, the harmonious variety of congregated -powers, displayed in these three great tragedies through almost infinite -variations of terror and pity and humor and sublime surprise, will seem -to some readers, whose reverence is no less grateful for other gifts of -the same great hand, unequalled at least till the advent in his -eighty-first year of <i>Torquemada.</i></p> - -<p>Victor Hugo was not yet thirty when all these triumphs lay behind him. -In the twenty-ninth year of a life which would seem fabulous and -incredible in the record of its achievements if divided by lapse of time -from all possible proof of its possibility by the attestation of dates -and facts, he published in February <i>Notre-Dame de Paris</i>, in November -<i>Les Feuilles d'Automne</i>: that the two dreariest months of the year -might not only "smell April and May," but outshine July and August. The -greatest of all tragic romances has a Grecian perfection of structure, -with a Gothic intensity of pathos. To attempt the praise of such a work -would be only less idle than to refuse it. Terror and pity, with eternal -fate for key-note to the strain of story, never struck deeper to men's -hearts through more faultless evolution of combining circumstance on the -tragic stage of Athens. Louis the Eleventh has been painted by many -famous hands, but Hugo's presentation of him, as compared for example -with Scott's, is as a portrait by Velasquez to a portrait by Vandyke. -The style was a new revelation of the supreme capacities of human -speech: the touch of it on any subject of description or of passion is -as the touch of the sun for penetrating irradiation and vivid evocation -of life.</p> - -<p>From the <i>Autumn Leaves</i> to the <i>Songs of the Twilight</i>, -and again from the <i>Inner Voices</i> to the <i>Sunbeams and -Shadows</i>, the continuous jet of lyric song through a space of ten -fertile years was so rich in serene and various beauty that the one -thing notable in a flying review of its radiant course is the general -equality of loveliness inform and color, which is relieved and -heightened at intervals by some especial example of a beauty more -profound or more sublime. The first volume of the four, if I mistake -not, won a more immediate and universal homage than the rest: its -unsurpassed melody was so often the raiment of emotion which struck home -to all hearts a sense of domestic tenderness too pure and sweet and -simple for perfect expression by any less absolute and omnipotent lord -of style, that it is no wonder if in many minds—many mothers' -minds especially—there should at once have sprung up an all but -ineradicable conviction that no subsequent verse must be allowed to -equal or excel the volume which contained such flower-like jewels of -song as the nineteenth and twentieth of these unwithering and -imperishable <i>Leaves.</i> But no error possible to a rational creature -could be more serious or more complete than the assumption of any -inferiority in the volume containing the two glorious poems addressed to -Admiral Canaris, the friend (may I be forgiven the filial vanity or -egotism which impels me to record it?) of the present writer's father in -his youth; the two first in date of Hugo's finest satires, the lines -that scourge a backbiter and the lines that brand a traitor (the -resonant and radiant indignation of the latter stands unsurpassed in the -very <i>Châtiments</i> themselves); the two most enchanting aubades or -songs of sunrise that ever had out-sung the birds and out-sweetened the -flowers of the dawn; and—for here I can cite no more—the closing -tribute of lines more bright than the lilies whose name they bear, -offered by a husband's love at the sweet still shrine of motherhood and -wifehood. The first two stanzas of the second aubade are all that can -here be quoted.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'aurore s'allume,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'ombre épaisse fuit;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le rêve et la brume</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vont où va la nuit;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Paupières et roses</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'ouvrent demi-closes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du réveil des choses</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On entend le bruit.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout chante et murmure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout parle à la fois,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fumée et verdure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les nids et les toits;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent parle aux chênes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'eau parie aux fontaines;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toutes les haleines</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Deviennent des voix.</span></p> - - -<p>And in each of the two succeeding volumes there is, among all their -other things of price, a lyric which may even yet be ranked with the -highest subsequent work of its author for purity of perfection, for -height and fulness of note, for music and movement and informing spirit -of life. We ought to have in English, but I fear—or rather I am -only too sure—we have not, a song in which the sound of the sea is -rendered as in that translation of the trumpet-blast of the night-wind, -with all its wails and pauses and fluctuations and returns, done for -once into human speech and interpreted into spiritual sense forever. For -instinctive mastery of its means and absolute attainment of its end, for -majesty of living music and fidelity of sensitive imagination, there is -no lyric poem in any language more wonderful or more delightful.</p> - - -<h4>UNE NUIT QU'ON ENTENDAIT LA MER SANS LA VOIR</h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quels sont ces bruits sourds?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Écoutez vers l'onde</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cette voix profonde</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui pleure toujours</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et qui toujours gronde,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quoiqu'un son plus clair</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Parfois l'interrompe...—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent de la mer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Souffle dans sa trompe.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme il pleut ce soir!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">N'est-ce pas, mon hôte?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Là-bas, à la côte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le ciel est bien noir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La mer est bien haute</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On dirait l'hiver;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Parfois on s'y trompe...—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent de la mer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Souffle dans sa trompe.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! marins perdus!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au loin, dans cette ombre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur la nef qui sombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que de bras tendus</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vers la terre sombre!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pas d'ancre de fer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que le flot ne rompe.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent de la mer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Souffle dans sa trompe.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nochers imprudents!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent dans la voile</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Déchire la toile</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme avec les dents!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Là-haut pas d'étoile!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'un lutte avec l'air,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'autre est à la pompe.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent de la mer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Souffle dans sa trompe.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est toi, c'est ton feu</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que le nocher rêve,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand le flot s'élève,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Chandelier que Dieu</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pose sur la grève,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Phare au rouge éclair</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que la brume estompe!—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent de la mer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Souffle dans sa trompe.</span></p> - - -<p>A yet sweeter and sadder and more magical sea-song there was yet to -come years after—but only from the lips of an exile. Of the -ballad—so to call it, if any term of definition may -suffice—which stands out as a crowning splendor among <i>Les -Rayons et les Ombres</i>, not even Hugo's own eloquence, had it been the -work (which is impossible) of any other great poet in all time, could -have said anything adequate at all. Not even Coleridge and Shelley, the -sole twin sovereigns of English lyric poetry, could have produced this -little piece of lyric work by combination and by fusion of their gifts. -The pathetic truthfulness and the simple manfulness of the mountain -shepherd's distraction and devotion might have been given in ruder -phrase and tentative rendering by the nameless ballad-makers of the -border: but here is a poem which unites something-of the charm of -<i>Clerk Saunders</i> and <i>The Wife of Usher's Well</i> with something -of the magic of <i>Christabel</i> and the <i>Ode to the West Wind</i>; a -thing, no doubt, impossible; but none the less obviously accomplished.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>The lyric work of these years would have been enough for the energy -of another man, for the glory of another poet; it was but a part, it was -(I had well nigh said) the lesser part, of its author's labors—if -labor be not an improper term for the successive or simultaneous -expressions or effusions of his indefatigable spirit. The year after -<i>Notre-Dame de Paris</i> and <i>Les Feuilles d'Automne</i> appeared -one of the great crowning tragedies of all time, <i>Le Roi s'amuse.</i> -As the key-note of <i>Marion de Lorme</i> had been redemption by -expiation, so the key-note of this play is expiation by retribution. The -simplicity, originality, and straightforwardness of the terrible means -through which this austere conception is worked out would give moral and -dramatic value to a work less rich in the tenderest and sublimest -poetry, less imbued with the purest fire of pathetic passion. After the -magnificent pleading of the Marquis de Nangis in the preceding play, it -must have seemed impossible that the poet should, without a touch of -repetition or reiterance, be able again to confront a young king with an -old servant, pour forth again the denunciation and appeal of a breaking -heart, clothe again the haughtiness of honor, the loyalty of grief, the -sanctity of indignation, in words that shine like lightning and verses -that thunder like the sea. But the veteran interceding for a nephew's -life is a less tragic figure than he who comes to ask account for a -daughter's honor. Hugo never merely repeats himself; his miraculous -fertility and force of utterance were not more indefatigable and -inexhaustible than the fountains of thought and emotion which fed that -eloquence with fire.</p> - -<p>In the seventh scene of the fourth act of <i>Marion de Lorme</i>, an old -warrior of the days of Henri Quatre comes to plead with the son of his -old comrade in arms for the life of his heir, condemned to death as a -duelist by the edict of Richelieu.</p> - - -<p class="actor">LE MARQUIS DE NANGIS (<i>se relevant</i>).</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Je dis qu'il est bien temps que vous y songiez, sire;<br /> -Que le cardinal-duc a de sombres projets,<br /> -Et qu'il boit le meilleur du sang de vos sujets.<br /> -Votre père Henri, de mémoire royale,<br /> -N'eût pas ainsi livré sa noblesse loyale;<br /> -Il ne la frappait point sans y fort regarder;<br /> -Et, bien gardé par elle, il la savait garder.<br /> -Il savait qu'on peut faire avec des gens d'épées<br /> -Quelque chose de mieux que des têtes coupées;<br /> -Qu'ils sont bons à la guerre. Il ne l'ignorait point,<br /> -Lui dont plus d'une balle a troué le pourpoint.<br /> -Ce temps était le bon. J'en fus, et je l'honore,<br /> -Un peu de seigneurie y palpitait encore.<br /> -Jamais à des seigneurs un prêtre n'eût touché.<br /> -On n'avait point alors de tête à bon marché.<br /> -Sire! en des jours mauvais comme ceux où nous<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">sommes,</span><br /> -Croyez un vieux, gardez un peu de gentilshommes.<br /> -Vous en aurez besoin peut-être à votre tour.<br /> -Hélas! vous gémirez peut-être quelque jour<br /> -Que la place de Grève ait été si fêtée,<br /> -Et que tant de seigneurs de bravoure indomptée,<br /> -Vers qui se tourneront vos regrets envieux,<br /> -Soient morts depuis longtemps qui ne seraient pas<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">vieux!</span><br /> -Car nous sommes tout chauds de la guerre civile,<br /> -Et le tocsin d'hier gronde encor dans la ville.<br /> -Soyez plus ménager des peines du bourreau.<br /> -C'est lui qui doit garder son estoc au fourreau,<br /> -Non pas vous. D'échafauds montrez-vous économe.<br /> -Craignez d'avoir un jour à pleurer tel brave homme,<br /> -Tel vaillant de grand cœur, dont, à l'heure qu'il est,<br /> -Le squelette blanchit aux chaînes d'un gibet!<br /> -Sire! le sang n'est pas une bonne rosée;<br /> -Nulle moisson ne vient sur la Grève arrosée,<br /> -Et le peuple des rois évite le balcon,<br /> -Quand aux dépens du Louvre on peuple Montfaucon.<br /> -Meurent les courtisans, s'il faut que leur voix aille<br /> -Vous amuser, pendant que le bourreau travaille!<br /> -Cette voix des flatteurs qui dit que tout est bon,<br /> -Qu'après tout on est fils d'Henri Quatre, et Bourbon,<br /> -Si haute qu'elle soit, ne couvre pas sans peine<br /> -Le bruit sourd qu'en tombant fait une tête humaine.<br /> -Je vous en donne avis, ne jouez pas ce jeu,<br /> -Roi, qui serez un jour face à face avec Dieu.<br /> -Donc, je vous dis, avant que rien ne s'accomplisse,<br /> -Qu'à tout prendre il vaut mieux un combat qu'un<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">supplice,</span><br /> -Que ce n'est pas la joie et l'honneur des états<br /> -De voir plus de besogne aux bourreaux qu'aux soldats,<br /> -Que c'est un pasteur dur pour la France où vous êtes<br /> -Qu'un prêtre qui se paye une dîme de têtes,<br /> -Et que cet homme illustre entre les inhumains<br /> -Qui touche à votre sceptre—a du sang à ses mains!</p> - - -<p>In the fifth scene of the first act of <i>Le Roi s'amuse</i>, an old -nobleman whose life, forfeit on a charge of friendship or relationship -with rebels, has been repurchased by his daughter from the king at the -price of her honor, is insulted by the king's jester when he comes to -speak with the king, and speaks thus, without a glance at the -jester.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Une insulte de plus!—Vous, sire, écoutez-moi,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme vous le devez, puisque vous êtes roi!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous m'avez fait un jour mener pieds nus en Grève;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Là, vous m'avez fait grâce, ainsi que dans un rêve,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et je vous ai béni, ne sachant en effet</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce qu'un roi cache au fond d'une grâce qu'il fait.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Or, vous aviez caché ma honte dans la mienne.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oui, sire, sans respect pour une race ancienne,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour le sang de Poitiers, noble depuis mille ans,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tandis que, revenant de la Grève à pas lents,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je priais dans mon cœur le dieu de la victoire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'il vous donnât mes jours de vie en jours de gloire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous, François de Valois, le soir du même jour,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sans crainte, sans pitié, sans pudeur, sans amour,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans votre lit, tombeau de la vertu des femmes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous avez froidement, sous vos baisers infâmes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Terni, flétri, souillé, déshonoré, brisé</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Diane de Poitiers, comtesse de Brézé!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quoi! lorsque j'attendais l'arrêt qui me condamne,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu courais donc au Louvre, ô ma chaste Diane!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et lui, ce roi sacré chevalier par Bayard,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jeune homme auquel il faut des plaisirs de vieillard,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour quelques jours de plus dont Dieu seul sait le compte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ton père sous ses pieds, te marchandait ta honte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et cet affreux tréteau, chose horrible à penser!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'un matin le bourreau vint en Grève dresser,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Avant la fin du jour devait être, ô misère!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ou le lit de la fille, ou l'échafaud du père!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô Dieu! qui nous jugez! qu'avez-vous dit là-haut,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand vos regards ont vu, sur ce même échafaud,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Se vautrer, triste et louche, et sanglante, et souillée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La luxure royale en clémence habillée?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sire! en faisant cela, vous avez mal agi.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que du sang d'un vieillard le pavé fût rougi,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'était bien. Ce vieillard, peut-être respectable,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le méritait, étant de ceux du connétable.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais que pour le vieillard vous ayez pris l'enfant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que vous ayez broyé sous un pied triomphant</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La pauvre femme en pleurs, à s'effrayer trop prompte</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est une chose impie, et dont vous rendrez compte!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous avez dépassé votre droit d'un grand pas.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le père é ait à vous, mais la fille non pas.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ah! vous m'avez fait grâce!—Ah! vous nommez la</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">chose</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Une grâce! et je suis un ingrat, je suppose!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Sire, au lieu d'abuser ma fille, bien plutôt</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que n'êtes-vous venu vous-même en mon cachot,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je vous aurais crié:—Faites-moi mourir, grâce!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! grâce pour ma fille, et grâce pour ma race!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! faites-moi mourir! la tombe, et non l'affront!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pas de tête plutôt qu'une souillure au front!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! monseigneur le roi, puisqu'ainsi l'on vous nomme,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Croyez-vous qu'un chrétien, um comte, un</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">gentilhomme,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Soit moins décapité, répondez, monseigneur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand au lieu de la tête il lui manque l'honneur?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—J'aurais dit cela, sire, et le soir, dans l'église,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans mon cercueil sanglant baisant ma barbe grise,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ma Diane au cœur pur, ma fille au front sacré,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Honorée, eût prié pour son père honoré!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Sire, je ne viens pas redemander ma fille.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand on n'a plus d'honneur, on n'a plus de famille.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'elle vous aime ou non d'un amour insensé,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je n'ai rien à reprendre où la honte a passé.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Gardez-la.—Seulement je me suis mis en tête</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De venir vous troubler ainsi dans chaque fête,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et jusqu'à ce qu'un père, un frère, ou quelque époux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—La chose arrivera,—nous ait vengés de vous,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pâle, à tous vos banquets, je reviendrai vous dire:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Vous avez mal agi, vous avez mal fait, sire!—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et vous m'écouterez, et votre front terni</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne se relèvera que quand j'aurai fini.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous voudrez, pour forcer ma vengeance à se taire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Me rendre au bourreau. Non. Vous ne l'oserez faire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De peur que ce ne soit mon spectre qui demain</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 30%;">(<i>Montrant sa tête</i>)</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Revienne vous parler,—cette tête à la main!</span></p> - - -<p><i>Marion de Lorme</i> had been prohibited by Charles the Tenth for -an imaginary reflection on Charles the Tenth; <i>Le Roi s'amuse</i> was -prohibited by Louis-Philippe the First—and Last—for an -imaginary reflection on Citizen Philippe Egalité. Victor Hugo -vindicated his meaning and reclaimed his rights in a most eloquent, most -manly, and most unanswerable speech before a tribunal which durst not -and could not but refuse him justice. Early in the following year he -brought out the first of his three tragedies in prose—in a prose -which even the most loyal lovers of poetry, Théophile Gautier at their -head, acknowledged on trial to be as good as verse. And assuredly it -would be, if any prose ever could: which yet I must confess that I for -one can never really feel to be possible. <i>Lucrèce Borgia</i>, the -first-born of these three, is also the most perfect in structure as well -as the most sublime in subject. The plots of all three are equally pure -inventions of tragic fancy: Gennaro and Fabiano, the heroic son of the -Borgia and the caitiff lover of the Tudor, are of course as utterly -unknown to history as is the self-devotion of the actress Tisbe. It is -more important to remark and more useful to remember that the master of -terror and pity, the command of all passions and all powers that may -subserve the purpose of tragedy, is equally triumphant and infallible in -them all. <i>Lucrèce Borgia</i> and <i>Marie Tudor</i> appeared -respectively in February and in November of the year 1833; -<i>Angelo</i>, two years later; and the year after this the exquisite -and melodious libretto of <i>La Esmeralda</i>, which should be carefully -and lovingly studied by all who would appreciate the all but superhuman -versatility and dexterity of metrical accomplishment which would have -sufficed to make a lesser poet famous among his peers forever, but may -almost escape notice in the splendor of Victor Hugo's other and sublimer -qualities. In his thirty-seventh year all these blazed out once more -together in the tragedy sometimes apparently rated as his master-work by -judges whose verdict would on any such question be worthy at least of -all considerate respect. No one that I know of has ever been absurd -enough to make identity in tone of thought or feeling, in quality of -spirit or of style, the ground for a comparison of Hugo with -Shakespeare: they are of course as widely different as are their -respective countries and their respective times: but never since the -death of Shakespeare had there been so perfect and harmonious a fusion -of the highest comedy with the deepest tragedy as in the five -many-voiced and many-colored acts of <i>Ruy Blas.</i></p> - -<p>At the age of forty Victor Hugo gave to the stage which for thirteen -years had been glorified by his genius the last work he was ever to -write for it. There may perhaps be other readers besides myself who take -even more delight in <i>Les Burgraves</i> than in some of the preceding -plays which had been more regular in action, more plausible in story, -less open to the magnificent reproach of being too good for the -stage—as the <i>Hamlet</i> which came finally from the recasting -hand of Shakespeare was found to be, in the judgment even of -Shakespeare's fellows; too rich in lyric beauty, too superb in epic -state. The previous year had seen the publication of the marvelously -eloquent, copious, and vivid letters which gave to the world the -impressions received by its greatest poet in a tour on the Rhine made -five years earlier—that is, in the year of <i>Ruy Blas.</i> In -this book, as Gautier at once observed, the inspiration of <i>Les -Burgraves</i> is evidently and easily traceable. Among numberless -masterpieces of description, from which I have barely time to select for -mention the view of Bishop Hatto's tower by the appropriately Dantesque -light of a furnace at midnight—not as better than others, but as -an example of the magic by which the writer imbues and impregnates -observation and recollection with feeling and with fancy—the most -enchanting legend of enchantment ever written for children of all ages, -sweet and strange enough to have grown up among the fairy tales of the -past whose only known authors are the winds and suns of their various -climates, lurks like a flower in a crevice of a crumbling fortress. The -entrancing and haunting beauty of Régina's words as she watches the -departing swallows—words which it may seem that any one might have -said, but to which none other could have given the accent and the effect -that Hugo has thrown into the simple sound of them—was as surely -derived, we cannot but think, from some such milder and brighter vision -of the remembered Rhineland solitudes, as were the sublime and all but -Æschylean imprecations of Guanhumara from the impression of their -darker and more savage memories or landscapes.</p> - - -<p class="actor">OTBERT (<i>lui montrant la fenêtre</i>).</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Voyez ce beau soleil!</p> - -<p class="actor">RÉGINA</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 48%;">Oui, le couchant s'enflamme.</p> -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Nous sommes en automne et nous sommes au soir.<br /> -Partout la feuille tombe et le bois devient noir.</p> - -<p class="actor">OTBERT</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Les feuilles renaîtront.</p> - -<p class="actor">RÉGINA</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 48%;">Oui.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 38%;">(<i>Rêvant et regardant le ciel.</i>)</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 50%;">Vite! à tire-d'ailes!—</p> -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">—Oh! c'est triste de voir s'enfuir les hirondelles!—<br /> -Elles s'en vont là-bas, vers le midi doré.</p> - -<p class="actor">OTBERT</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Elles reviendront.</p> - -<p class="actor">RÉGINA</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 42%;">Oui.—Mais moi je ne verrai</p> -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Ni l'oiseau revenir ni la feuille renaître!</p> - - -<p>Two years before the appearance of <i>Les Burgraves</i> Victor Hugo -had begun his long and glorious career as an orator by a speech of -characteristically generous enthusiasm, delivered on his reception into -the Academy. The forgotten playwright and versifier whom he succeeded -had been a professional if not a personal enemy: the one memorable thing -about the man was his high-minded opposition to the tyranny of Napoleon, -his own personal friend before the epoch of that tyranny began: and this -was the point at once seized and dwelt on by the orator in a tone of -earnest and cordial respect. The fiery and rapturous eloquence with -which, at the same time, he celebrated the martial triumphs of the -empire, gave ample proof that he was now, as his father had prophesied -that his mother's royalist boy would become when he grew to be a man, a -convert to the views of that father, a distinguished though ill-requited -soldier of the empire, and a faithful champion or mourner of its cause. -The stage of Napoleonic hero-worship, single-minded and single-eyed if -short-sighted and misdirected, through which Victor Hugo was still -passing on towards the unseen prospect of a better faith, had been -vividly illustrated and vehemently proclaimed in his letters on the -Rhine, and was hereafter to be described with a fervent and pathetic -fidelity in a famous chapter of <i>Les Misérables.</i> The same phase -of patriotic prepossession inspired his no less generous tribute to the -not very radiant memory of Casimir Delavigne, to whom he paid likewise -the last and crowning honor of a funeral oration: an honor afterwards -conferred on Frédéric Soulié, and far more deservedly bestowed on -Honoré de Balzac. More generous his first political speech in the -chamber of peers could not be, but there was more of reason and justice -in its fruitless appeal for more than barren sympathy, for a moral -though not material intervention, on behalf of Poland in 1846. His -second speech as a peer is an edifying commentary on the vulgar English -view of his character as defective in all the practical and rational -qualities of a politician, a statesman, or a patriot. The subject was -the consolidation and defense of the French coastline: a poet, of -course, according to all reasonable tradition, if he ventured to open -his unserviceable lips at all on such a grave matter of public business, -ought to have remembered what was expected of him by the sagacity of -blockheads, and carefully confined himself to the clouds, leaving facts -to take care of themselves and proofs to hang floating in the air, while -his vague and verbose declamation wandered at its own sweet will about -and about the matter in hand, and never came close enough to grapple it. -This, I regret to say, is exactly what the greatest poet of his age was -inconsiderate enough to avoid, and most markedly to abstain from doing; -a course of conduct which can only be attributed to his notorious and -deplorable love of paradox. His speech, though not wanting in eloquence -of a reserved and masculine order, was wholly occupied with sedate and -business-like exposition of facts and suggestion of remedies, grounded -on experience and study of the question, and resulting in a proposal at -once scientific and direct for such research as might result, if -possible, in an arrest of the double danger with which the coast was -threatened by the advance of the Atlantic and the Channel to a gradual -obstruction of the great harbors and by the withdrawal or subsidence of -the Mediterranean from the seaports of the south; finally, the orator -urged upon his audience as a crowning necessity the creation of fresh -harbors of refuge in dangerous and neglected parts of the coast; -insisting, with a simple and serious energy somewhat unlike the -imaginary tone of the typical or traditional poet, on the plain fact -that ninety-two ships had been lost on the same part of the coast within -a space of seven years, which might have been saved by the existence of -a harbor of refuge. To an Olympian or a Nephelococcygian intelligence -such a paltry matter should have been even more indifferent than the -claim of a family of exiles on the compassion of the country which had -expelled them. To my own more humble and homely understanding it seems -that there are not many more significant or memorable facts on record in -the history of our age than this: that Victor Hugo was the advocate -whose pleading brought back to France the banished race of which the -future representative was for upwards of twenty years to keep him in -banishment from France. On the evening of the same day on which the -house of peers had listened to his speech in behalf of the Bonaparte -family, Louis-Philippe, having taken cognizance of it, expressed his -intention to authorize the return of the brood whose chief was hereafter -to pick the pockets of his children. In the first fortnight of the -following year the future author of the terrible <i>Vision of Dante</i> -saluted in words full of noble and fervent reverence the apostle of -Italian resurrection and Italian unity in the radiant figure of Pope -Pius the Ninth. When the next month's revolution had flung -Louis-Philippe from his throne, Victor Hugo declined to offer himself to -the electors as a candidate for a seat in the assembly about to -undertake the charge of framing a constitution for the commonwealth; -but, if summoned by his fellow-citizens to take his share of this task, -he expressed himself ready to discharge the duty so imposed on him with -the disinterested self-devotion of which his whole future career was to -give such continuous and such austere evidence. From the day on which -sixty thousand voices summoned him to redeem this pledge, he never -stinted nor slackened his efforts to fulfill the charge he had accepted -in the closing words of a short, simple, and earnest address, in which -he placed before his electors the contrasted likenesses of two different -republics; one, misnamed a commonweal, the rule of the red flag, of -barbarism and blindness, communism and proscription and revenge; the -other a commonwealth indeed, in which all rights should be respected and -no duties evaded or ignored; a government of justice and mercy, of -practicable principles and equitable freedom, of no iniquitous -traditions and no utopian aims. To establish this kind of commonwealth -and prevent the resurrection of the other, Hugo, at the age of -forty-six, professed himself ready to devote his life. The work of -thirty-seven years is now before all men's eyes for proof how well this -promise has been kept. On dangerous questions of perverse or perverted -socialism (June 20, 1848), on the freedom of the press, on the state of -siege, its temporary necessity and its imminent abuse, on the -encouragement of letters and the freedom of the stage, he spoke, in the -course of a few months, with what seems to my poor understanding the -most admirable good sense and temperance, the most perfect moderation -and loyalty. I venture to dwell upon this division of Hugo's life and -labors with as little wish of converting as I could have hope to convert -that large majority whose verdict has established as a law of nature the -fact or the doctrine that "every poet is a fool" when he meddles with -practical politics; but not without a confidence grounded on no -superficial study that the maintainers of this opinion, if they wish to -cite in support of it the evidence supplied by Victor Hugo's political -career, will do well to persevere in the course which I will do them the -justice to admit that—as far as I know—they have always -hitherto adopted; in other words, to assume the universal assent of all -persons worth mentioning to the accuracy of this previous assumption, -and dismiss with a quiet smile or an open sneer the impossible notion -that any one but some single imbecile or eccentric can pretend to take -seriously what seems to them ridiculous, or to think that ridiculous -which to their wiser minds commends itself as serious. This beaten road -of assumption, this well-worn highway of assertion, is a safe as well as -a simple line of travel: and the practical person who keeps to it can -well afford to dispense with argument as palpably superfluous, and with -evidence as obviously impertinent. Should he so far forget that great -principle of precaution as to diverge from it into the modest and simple -course of investigation and comparison of theory with fact and -probability with proof, his task maybe somewhat harder, and its result -somewhat less satisfactory. I would not advise any but an honest and -candid believer in the theory which identifies genius with -idiocy—which at all events would practically define one special -form of genius as a note of general idiocy—to study the speeches -(they are nine in number, including two brief and final replies to the -personal attacks of one Montalembert, whose name used to be rather -popular among a certain class of English journalists as that of a -practical worshipper of their great god Compromise, and a professional -enemy of all tyranny or villainy that was not serviceable and obsequious -to his Church)—to study, I say, the speeches delivered by Victor -Hugo in the Legislative Assembly during a space of exactly two years and -eight days. The first of these speeches dealt with the question of what -in England we call pauperism—with the possibility, the necessity, -and the duty of its immediate relief and its ultimate removal: the -second, with the infamous and inexpiable crime which diverted against -the Roman republic an expedition sent out under the plea of protecting -Rome against the atrocities of Austrian triumph. A double-faced and -double-dealing law, which under the name or the mask of free education -aimed at securing for clerical instruction a monopoly of public support -and national encouragement, was exposed and denounced by Hugo in a -speech which insisted no less earnestly and eloquently on the spiritual -duty and the spiritual necessity of faith and hope than on the practical -necessity and duty of vigilant resistance to priestly pretension, and -vigilant exposure of ecclesiastical hypocrisy and reactionary intrigue. -Against "the dry guillotine" of imprisonment in a tropical climate added -to transportation for political offences, the whole eloquence of a heart -as great as his genius was poured forth in fervor of indignation and -pity, of passion and reason combined. The next trick of the infamous -game played by the conspirators against the commonwealth, who were now -beginning to show their hand, was the mutilation of the suffrage. To -this again Victor Hugo opposed the same steadfast front of earnest and -rational resistance; and yet again to the sidelong attack of the same -political gang on the existing freedom of the press. A year and eight -days elapsed before the delivery of his next and last great speech in -the Assembly which he would fain have saved from the shame and ruin then -hard at hand—the harvest of its own unprincipled infatuation. The -fruit of conspiracy, long manured with fraud and falsehood and all the -furtive impurities of intrigue, was now ripe even to rottenness, and -ready to fall into the hands already stretched towards it—into the -lips yet open to protest that no one—the accuser himself must know -it—that no one was dreaming of a second French empire. All that -reason and indignation, eloquence and argument, loyalty and sincerity -could do to save the commonwealth from destruction and the country from -disgrace, was done: how utterly in vain is matter of history—of -one among the darkest pages in the roll of its criminal records. The -voice of truth and honor was roared and hooted down by the faction whose -tactics would have discredited a den of less dishonest and more -barefaced thieves; the stroke of state was ready for striking; and the -orator's next address was the utterance of an exile.</p> - -<p>There are not, even in the whole work of Victor Hugo, many pages of -deeper and more pathetic interest than those which explain to us "what -exile is." Each of the three prefaces to the three volumes of his -<i>Actes et Paroles</i> is rich in living eloquence, in splendid epigram -and description, narrative and satire and study of men and things: but -the second, it seems to me, would still be first in attraction, if it -had no other claim than this, that it contains the record of the death -of Captain Harvey. No reverence for innocent and heroic suffering, no -abhorrence of triumphant and execrable crime, can impede or interfere -with our sense of the incalculable profit, the measureless addition to -his glory and our gain, resulting from Victor Hugo's exile of nineteen -years and nine months. Greater already than all other poets of his time -together, these years were to make him greater than any but the very -greatest of all time. His first task was of course the discharge of a -direct and practical duty; the record or registration of the events he -had just witnessed, the infliction on the principal agent in them of the -simple and immediate chastisement consisting in the delineation of his -character and the recapitulation of his work. There would seem to be -among modern Englishmen an impression—somewhat singular, it -appears to me, in a race which professes to hold in special reverence a -book so dependent for its arguments and its effects on a continuous -appeal to conscience and emotion as the Bible—that the presence of -passion, be it never so righteous, so rational, so inevitable by any one -not ignoble or insane, implies the absence of reason; that such -indignation as inflamed the lips of Elijah with prophecy, and armed the -hand of Jesus with a scourge, is a sign—except of course in -Palestine of old—that the person affected by this kind of moral -excitement must needs be a lunatic of the sentimental if not rather of -the criminal type. The main facts recorded in the pages of <i>Napoléon -le Petit</i> and <i>L'Histoire d'un Crime</i> are simple, flagrant, -palpable, indisputable. The man who takes any other view of them than is -expressed in these two books must be prepared to impugn and to confute -the principle that perjury, robbery, and murder are crimes. But, we are -told, the perpetual vehemence of incessant imprecation, the stormy -insistence of unremitting obloquy, which accompanies every chapter, -illuminates every page, underlines every sentence of the narrative, must -needs impair the confidence of an impartial reader in the -trustworthiness of a chronicle and a commentary written throughout as in -characters of flaming fire. Englishmen are proud to prefer a more -temperate, a more practical, a more sedate form of political or -controversial eloquence. When I remember and consider certain examples -of popular oratory and controversy now flagrant and flourishing among -us, I am tempted to doubt the exact accuracy of this undoubtedly -plausible proposition: but, be that as it may, I must take leave to -doubt yet more emphatically the implied conclusion that the best or the -only good witness procurable on a question of right and wrong is one too -impartial to feel enthusiasm or indignation; that indifference alike to -good and evil is the sign of perfect equity and trustworthiness in a -judge of moral or political questions; that a man who has witnessed a -deliberate massacre of unarmed men, women, and children, if he be -indiscreet enough to describe his experience in any tone but that of a -scientific or æsthetic serenity, forfeits the inherent right of a -reasonable and an honorable man to command a respectful and attentive -hearing from all honorable and reasonable men.</p> - -<p>But valuable and precious as all such readers will always hold these -two book of immediate and implacable history, they will not, I presume, -be rated among the more important labors of their author's literary -life. No one who would know fully or would estimate aright the greatest -genius born into the world in our nineteenth century can afford to pass -them by with less than careful and sympathetic study: for without moral -sympathy no care will enable a student to form any but a trivial and a -frivolous judgment on writings which make their primary appeal to the -conscience—to the moral instinct and the moral intelligence of the -reader. They may perhaps not improperly be classed, for historic or -biographic interest, with the <i>Littérature et Philosophie -mêlées</i> which had been given to the world in 1834. From the crudest -impressions of the boy to the ripest convictions of the man, one common -quality informs and harmonizes every stage of thought, every phase of -feeling, every change of spiritual outlook, which has left its mark on -the writings of which that collection is composed; the quality of a -pure, a perfect, an intense and burning sincerity. Apart from this -personal interest which informs them all, two at least are indispensable -to any serious and thorough study of Hugo's work: the fervent and -reiterated intercession on behalf of the worse than neglected treasures -of mediaeval architecture then delivered over for a prey to the claws of -the destroyer and the paws of the restorer; the superb essay on -Mirabeau, which remains as a landmark or a tidemark in the history of -his opinions and the development of his powers. But the highest -expression of these was not to be given in prose—not even in the -prose of Victor Hugo.</p> - -<p>There is not, it seems to me, in all this marvelous life, to which well -nigh every year brought its additional aureole of glory, a point more -important, a date more memorable, than the publication of the -<i>Châtiments.</i> Between the prologue <i>Night</i> and the epilogue -<i>Light</i> the ninety-eight poems that roll and break and lighten and -thunder like waves of a visible sea fulfill the choir of their crescent -and refluent harmonies with hardly less depth and change and strength of -music, with no less living force and with no less passionate unity, than -the waters on whose shores they were written. Two poems, the third and -the sixth, in the first of the seven books into which the collection is -divided, may be taken as immediate and sufficient instances of the two -different keys in which the entire book is written; of the two styles, -one bitterly and keenly realistic, keeping scornfully close to shameful -fact—one higher in flight and wider in range of outlook, soaring -strongly to the very summits of lyric passion—which alternate in -terrible and sublime antiphony throughout the living pages of this -imperishable record. A second Juvenal might have drawn for us with not -less of angry fidelity and superb disgust the ludicrous and loathsome -inmates of the den infested by holy hirelings of the clerical press; no -Roman satirist could have sung, no Roman lyrist could have thundered, -such a poem as that which has blasted for ever the name and the memory -of the prostitute archbishop Sibour. The poniard of the priest who -struck him dead at the altar he had desecrated struck a blow less deep -and deadly than had been dealt already on the renegade pander of a far -more infamous assassin. The next poem is a notable and remarkable -example of the fusion sometimes accomplished—or, if this be -thought a phrase too strong for accuracy, of the middle note sometimes -touched, of the middle way sometimes taken—between the purely -lyric and the purely satiric style or method. But it would be necessary -to dwell on every poem, to pause at every page, if adequate justice were -to be done to this or indeed to any of the volumes of verse published -from this time forth by Victor Hugo. I will therefore, not without -serious diffidence, venture once more to indicate by selection such -poems as seem to me most especially notable among the greatest even of -these. In the first book, besides the three already mentioned, I take -for examples the solemn utterance of indignant mourning addressed to the -murdered dead of the fourth of December; the ringing song in praise of -art which ends in a note of noble menace; the scornful song that follows -it, with a burden so majestic in its variations; the fearful and -faithful "map of Europe" in 1852, with its closing word of witness for -prophetic hope and faith; and the simple perfection of pathos in the -song of the little forsaken birds and lambs and children. In the second -book, the appeal "To the People," with a threefold cry for burden, -calling on the buried Lazarus to rise again in words that seem to -reverberate from stanza to stanza like peal upon peal of living thunder, -prolonged in steadfast cadence from height to height across the hollows -of a range of mountains, is one of the most wonderful symphonies of -tragic and triumphant verse that ever shook the hearts of its hearers -with rapture of rage and pity. The first and the two last stanzas seem -to me absolutely unsurpassed and unsurpassable for pathetic majesty of -music.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Partout pleurs, sanglots, cris funèbres.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi dors-tu dans les ténèbres?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je ne veux pas que tu sois mort.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi dors-tu dans les ténèbres?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce n'est pas l'instant où l'on dort.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">La pâle Liberté gît sanglante à ta porte.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu le sais, toi mort, elle est morte.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voici le chacal sur ton seuil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voici les rats et les belettes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Pourquoi t'es-tu laissé lier de bandelettes?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils te mordent dans ton cercueil!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De tous les peuples on prépare</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Le convoi...—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lazare! Lazare! Lazare!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Lève-toi!</span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 15%;">* * * * * *</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils bâtissent des prisons neuves;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô dormeur sombre, entends les fleuves</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Murmurer, teints de sang vermeil;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entends pleurer les pauvres veuves,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô noir dormeur au dur sommeil!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Martyrs, adieu! le vent souffle, les pontons flottent,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les mères au front gris sanglotent;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Leurs fils sont en proie aux vainqueurs;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elles gémissent sur la route;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Les pleurs qui de leurs yeux s'échappent goutte à goutte</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Filtrent en haine dans nos cœurs.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les juifs triomphent, groupe avare</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Et sans foi...—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lazare! Lazare! Lazare!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Lève-toi!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais, il semble qu'on se réveille!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Est-ce toi que j'ai dans l'oreille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Bourdonnement du sombre essaim?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans la ruche frémit l'abeille;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'entends sourdre un vague tocsin.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Les césars, oubliant qu'il est des gémonies,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'endorment dans les symphonies,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du lac Baltique au mont Etna;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les peuples sont dans la nuit noire;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Dormez, rois; le clairon dit aux tyrans: victoire!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'orgue leur chante; hosanna!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui répond à cette fanfare?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Le beffroi...—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lazare! Lazare! Lazare!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Lève-toi!</span></p> - - -<p>If ever a more superb structure of lyric verse was devised by the brain -of man, it must have been, I am very certain, in a language utterly -unknown to me. Every line, every pause, every note of it should be -studied and restudied by those who would thoroughly understand the -lyrical capacity of Hugo's at its very highest point of power, in the -fullest sweetness of its strength.</p> - -<p>About the next poem—'Souvenir de la nuit du 4'—others may -try, if they please, to write, if they can; I can only confess that I -cannot. Nothing so intolerable in its pathos, I should think, was ever -written.</p> <p>The stately melody of the stanzas in which the exile -salutes in a tone of severe content the sorrows that environ and the -comforts that sustain him, the island of his refuge, the sea-birds and -the sea-rocks and the sea, closes aptly with yet another thought of the -mothers weeping for their children.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque le juste est dans l'abîme,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'on donne le sceptre au crime,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque tous les droits sont trahis,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque les plus fiers restent mornes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'on affiche au coin des bornes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le déshonneur de mon pays;</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô République de nos pères,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Grand Panthéon plein de lumières.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dôme d'or dans le libre azur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Temple des ombres immortelles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'on vient avec des échelles</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Coller l'empire sur ton mur;</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque toute âme est affaiblie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'on rampe, puisqu'on oublie</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vrai, le pur, le grand, le beau.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les yeux indignés de l'histoire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'honneur, la loi, le droit, la gloire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et ceux qui sont dans le tombeau;</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je t'aime, exil! douleur, je t'aime!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tristesse, sois mon diadème!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je t'aime, altière pauvreté!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'aime ma porte aux vents battue.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'aime le deuil, grave statue</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui vient s'asseoir à mon côté.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'aime le malheur qui m'éprouve,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et cette ombre où je vous retrouve,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô vous à qui mon cœur sourit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dignité, foi, vertu voilée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toi, liberté, fière exilée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et toi, dévouement, grand proscrit!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'aime cette île solitaire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jersey, que la libre Angleterre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Couvre de son vieux pavillon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'eau noire, par moments accrue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le navire, errante charrue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le flot, mystérieux sillon.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'aime ta mouette, ô mer profonde,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui secoue en perles ton onde</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur son aile aux fauves couleurs,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Plonge dans les lames géantes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et sort de ces gueules béantes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme l'âme sort des douleurs.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'aime la roche solennelle</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'où j'entends la plainte éternelle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sans trêve comme le remords,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toujours renaissant dans les ombres,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des vagues sur les écueils sombres,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des mères sur leurs enfants morts.</span></p> - - -<p>The close of the third poem in the fourth book is a nobler protest than -ever has been uttered or ever can be uttered in prose against the -servile sophism of a false democracy which affirms or allows that a -people has the divine right of voting itself into bondage. There is -nothing grander in Juvenal, and nothing more true.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce droit, sachez-le bien, chiens du berger Maupas,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et la France et le peuple eux-mêmes ne l'ont pas.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'altière Vérité jamais ne tombe en cendre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La Liberté n'est pas une guenille à vendre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jetée au tas, pendue au clou chez un fripier.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand un peuple se laisse au piège estropier,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le droit sacré, toujours à soi-même fidèle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans chaque citoyen trouve une citadelle;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On s'illustre en bravant un lâche conquérant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le moindre du peuple en devient le plus grand.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Donc, trouvez du bonheur, ô plates créatures,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À vivre dans la fange et dans les pourritures,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adorez ce fumier sous ce dais de brocart,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'honnête homme recule et s'accoude à l'écart.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans la chute d'autrui je ne veux pas descendre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'honneur n'abdique point. Nul n'a droit de me prendre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ma liberté, mon bien, mon ciel bleu, mon amour.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout l'univers aveugle est sans droit sur le jour.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fût on cent millions d'esclaves, je suis libre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ainsi parle Caton. Sur la Seine ou le Tibre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Personne n'est tombé tant qu'un seul est debout.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vieux sang des aïeux qui s'indigne et qui bout,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La vertu, la fierté, la justice, l'histoire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toute une nation avec toute sa gloire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vit dans le dernier front qui ne veut pas plier.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour soutenir le temple il suffit d'un pilier;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un français, c'est la France; un romain contient Rome,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et ce qui brise un peuple avorte aux pieds d'un homme.</span></p> - - -<p>The sixth and seventh poems in this book are each a superb example of -its kind; the verses on an interview between Abd-el-Kader and Bonaparte -are worthy of a place among the earlier <i>Orientales</i> for simplicity -and fullness of effect in lyric tone and color; and satire could hardly -give a finer and completer little study than that of the worthy -tradesman who for love of his own strong-box would give his vote for a -very Phalaris to reign over him, and put up with the brazen bull for -love of the golden calf: an epigram which sums up an epoch. The -indignant poem of <i>Joyeuse Vie</i>, with its terrible photographs of -subterranean toil and want, is answered by the not less terrible though -ringing and radiant song of <i>L'empereur s'amuse</i>; and this again by -the four solemn stanzas in which a whole world of desolate suffering is -condensed and realized. The verses of good counsel in which the imperial -Macaire is admonished not to take himself too seriously, or trust in the -duration of his fair and foul good fortune, are unsurpassed for -concentration of contempt. The dialogue of the tyrannicide by the -starlit sea with all visible and invisible things that impel or implore -him to do justice is so splendid and thrilling in its keen and ardent -brevity that we can hardly feel as though a sufficient answer were given -to the instinctive reasoning which finds inarticulate utterance in the -cry of the human conscience for retribution by a human hand, even when -we read the two poems, at once composed and passionate in their -austerity, which bid men leave God to deal with the supreme criminal of -humanity. <i>A Night's Lodging</i>, the last poem of the fourth book, is -perhaps the very finest and most perfect example of imaginative and -tragic satire that exists: if this rank be due to a poem at once the -most vivid in presentation, the most sublime in scorn, the most intense -and absolute in condensed expression of abhorrence and in assured -expression of belief.</p> - -<p>But in the fifth of these seven caskets of chiseled gold and tempered -steel there is a pearl of greater price than in any of the four yet -opened. The song dated from sea, which takes farewell of all good things -and all gladness left behind—of house and home, of the flowers and -the sky, of the betrothed bride with her maiden brow—the song -which has in its burden tile heavy plashing sound of the wave following -on the wave that swells and breaks against the bulwarks—the song -of darkening waters and darkened lives has in it a magic, for my own ear -at least, incomparable in the whole wide world of human song. Even to -the greatest poets of all time such a godsend as this—such a -breath of instant inspiration—can come but rarely and seem given -as by miracle. "There is sorrow on the sea," as the prophet said of old; -but when was there sorrow on sea or land which found such piercing and -such perfect utterance as this?</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">L'onde est en furie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Azur!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adieu, maison, treille au fruit mûr</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adieu, les fleurs d'or du vieux mur!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Ciel, forêt, prairie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Azur!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">L'onde est en furie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Azur!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Adieu, fiancée au front pur.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le ciel est noir, le vent est dur.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Lise, Anna, Marie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Azur!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">L'onde est en furie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Azur!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Notre œil, que voile un deuil futur.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Va du flot sombre au sort obscur.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Pour toi mon cœur prie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Adieu, patrie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Azur!</span></p> - - -<p>The next poem is addressed to a disappointed accomplice of the crime -still triumphant and imperial in the eyes of his fellow-scoundrels, who -seems to have shown signs of a desire to break away from them and a -suspicion that even then the ship of empire was beginning to -leak—though in fact it had still seventeen years of more or less -radiant rascality to float through before it foundered in the ineffable -ignominy of Sedan. Full of ringing and stinging eloquence, of keen and -sonorous lines or lashes of accumulating scorn, this poem is especially -noteworthy for its tribute to the murdered republic of Rome. Certain -passages in certain earlier works of Hugo, in <i>Cromwell</i> for -instance and in <i>Marie Tudor</i>, had given rise to a natural and -indeed inevitable suspicion of some prejudice or even antipathy on the -writer's part which had not less unavoidably aroused a feeling among -Italians that his disposition or tone of mind was anything but cordial -or indeed amicable towards their country: a suspicion probably -heightened, and a feeling probably sharpened, by his choice of such -dramatic subjects from Italian history or tradition as the domestic -eccentricities of the exceptional family of Borgia, and the -inquisitorial misdirection of the degenerate commonwealth of Venice. To -the sense that Hugo was hardly less than an enemy and that Byron had -been something more than a well-wisher to Italy I have always attributed -the unquestionable and otherwise inexplicable fact that Mazzini should -have preferred the pinchbeck and tinsel of Byron to the gold and ivory -of Hugo. But it was impossible that the master poet of the world should -not live to make amends, if indeed amends were needed, to the country of -Mazzini and of Dante.</p> - -<p>If I have hardly time to mention the simple and vivid narrative of -the martyrdom of Pauline Roland, I must pause at least to dwell for a -moment on so famous and so great a poem as <i>L'Expiation</i>; but not -to pronounce, or presume to endeavor to decide, which of its several -pictures is the most powerful, which of its epic or lyric variations the -most impressive and triumphant in effect. The huge historic pageant of -ruin, from Moscow to Waterloo, from Waterloo to St. Helena, with the -posthumous interlude of apotheosis which the poet had loudly and proudly -celebrated just twelve years earlier in an ode, turned suddenly into the -peep-show of a murderous mountebank, the tawdry triumph of buffoons -besmeared with innocent blood, is so tremendous in its anticlimax that -not the sublimest and most miraculous climax imaginable could make so -tragic and sublime an impression so indelible from the mind. The slow -agony of the great army under the snow; its rout and dissolution in the -supreme hour of panic; the slower agony, the more gradual dissolution, -of the prisoner with a gaoler's eye intent on him to the last; who can -say which of these three is done into verse with most faultless and -sovereign power of hand, most pathetic or terrific force and skill? And -the hideous judicial dishonor of the crowning retribution after death, -the parody of his empire and the prostitution of his name, is so much -more than tragic by reason of the very farce in it that out of ignominy -itself and uttermost degradation the poet has made something more august -in moral impression than all pageants of battle or of death.</p> - -<p>In the sixth book I can but rapidly remark the peculiar beauty and -greatness of the lyric lines in which the sound of steady seas regularly -breaking on the rocks at Rozel Tower is rendered with so solemn and -severe an echo of majestic strength in sadness; the verses addressed to -the people on its likeness and unlikeness to the sea; the scornful and -fiery appeal to the spirit of Juvenal; the perfect idyllic picture of -spring, with all the fruitless exultation of its blossoms and its birds, -made suddenly dark and dissonant by recollection of human crime and -shame; the heavenly hopefulness of comfort in the message of the morning -star, conveyed into colors of speech and translated into cadences of -sound which no painter or musician could achieve.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je m'étais endormi la nuit près de la grève.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un vent frais m'éveilla, je sortis de mon rêve,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ouvris les yeux, je vis l'étoile du matin.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle resplendissait au fond du ciel lointain</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans une blancheur molle, infinie et charmante.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aquilon s'enfuyait emportant la tourmente.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'astre éclatant changeait la nuée en duvet.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'était une clarté qui pensait, qui vivait;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle apaisait l'écueil où la vague déferle;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On croyait voir une âme à travers une perle.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il faisait nuit encor, l'ombre régnait en vain,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le ciel s'illuminait d'un sourire divin.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La lueur argentait le haut du mât qui penche;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le navire était noir, mais la voile était blanche;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des goëlands debout sur un escarpement,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Attentifs, contemplaient l'étoile gravement</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme un oiseau céleste et fait d'une étincelle:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'océan qui ressemble au peuple allait vers elle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et, rugissant tout bas, la regardait briller,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et semblait avoir peur de la faire envoler.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un ineffable amour emplissait l'étendue.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'herbe verte à mes pieds frissonnait éperdue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les oiseaux se parlaient dans les nids; une fleur</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui s'éveillait me dit: c'est l'étoile ma sœur.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et pendant qu'à longs plis l'ombre levait son voile,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'entendis une voix qui venait de l'étoile</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et qui disait:—Je suis l'astre qui vient d'abord.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis celle qu'on croit dans la tombe et qui sort.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai lui sur le Sina, j'ai lui sur le Taygète;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis le caillou d'or et de feu que Dieu jette,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme avec une fronde, au front noir de la nuit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis ce qui renaît quand un monde est détruit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô nations! je suis la Poésie ardente.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai brillé sur Moïse et j'ai brillé sur Dante.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le lion océan est amoureux de moi.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'arrive. Levez-vous, vertu, courage, foi!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Penseurs, esprits! montez sur la tour, sentinelles!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Paupières, ouvrez-vous; allumez-vous, prunelles;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Terre, émeus le sillon; vie, éveille le bruit;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Debout, vous qui dormez; car celui qui me suit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Car celui qui m'envoie en avant la première,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est l'ange Liberté, c'est le géant Lumière!</span></p> - - -<p>The first poem of the seventh book, on the falling of the walls of -Jericho before the seventh trumpet-blast, is equally great in -description and in application; the third is one of the great lyric -masterpieces of all time, the triumphant ballad of the Black Huntsman, -unsurpassed in the world for ardor of music and fitful change of note -from mystery and terror to rage and tempest and supreme serenity of -exultation—"wind and storm fulfilling his word," we may literally -say of this omnipotent sovereign of song.</p> - -<p>The sewer of Rome, a final receptacle for dead dogs and rotting Cæsars, -is painted line by line and detail by detail in verse which touches with -almost frightful skill the very limit of the possible or permissible to -poetry in the way of realistic loathsomeness or photographic horror; -relieved here and there by a rare and exquisite image, a fresh breath or -tender touch of loveliness from the open air of the daylight world -above. The song on the two Napoleons is a masterpiece of skilful -simplicity in contrast of tones and colors. But the song which follows, -written to a tune of Beethoven's, has in it something more than the -whole soul of music, the whole passion of self-devoted hope and -self-transfiguring faith; it gives the final word of union between sound -and spirit, the mutual coronation and consummation of them both.</p> - - -<h4><i>PATRIA</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">La-haut qui sourit?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Est-ce un esprit?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Est-ce une femme?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quel front sombre et doux!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Peuple, à genoux!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Est-ce notre âme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Qui vient à nous?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cette figure en deuil</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Paraît sur notre seuil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et notre antique orgueil</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Sort du cercueil.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses fiers regards vainqueurs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Réveillent tous les cœurs,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les nids dans les buissons,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et les chansons.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est l'ange du jour;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">L'espoir, l'amour</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Du cœur qui pense;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du monde enchanté</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">C'est la clarté.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Son nom est France</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Ou Vérité.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Bel ange, à ton miroir</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand s'offre un vil pouvoir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu viens, terrible à voir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Sous le ciel noir.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu dis au monde: Allons!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Formez vos bataillons!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le monde ébloui</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Te répond: Oui.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est l'ange de nuit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Rois, il vous suit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Marquant d'avance</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le fatal moment</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Au firmament.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Son nom est France</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Ou Châtiment.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ainsi que nous voyons</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">En mai les alcyons,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voguez, ô nations,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Dans ses rayons</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son bras aux deux dressé</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ferme le noir passé</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et les portes de fer</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Du sombre enfer.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est l'ange de Dieu.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Dans le ciel bleu</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Son aile immense</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Couvre avec fierté</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">L'humanité.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Son nom est France</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Ou Liberté!</span></p> - - -<p>The <i>Caravan</i>, a magnificent picture, is also a magnificent -allegory and a magnificent hymn. The poem following sums up in -twenty-six lines a whole world of terror and of tempest hurtling and -wailing round the wreck of a boat by night. It is followed by a superb -appeal against the infliction of death on rascals whose reptile blood -would dishonor and defile the scaffold: and this again by an admonition -to their chief not to put his trust in the chance of a high place of -infamy among the more genuinely imperial hellhounds of historic record. -The next poem gives us in perfect and exquisite summary the opinions of -a contemporary conservative on a dangerous anarchist of extravagant -opinions and disreputable character, whom for example's sake it was at -length found necessary to crucify. There is no song more simply and -nobly pitiful than that which tells us in its burden how a man may die -for lack of his native country as naturally and inevitably as for lack -of his daily bread. I cite only the last three stanzas by way of -sample.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">Les exilés: s'en vont pensifs.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Leur âme, hélas! n'est plus entière.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Ils regardent l'ombre des ifs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Sur les fosses du cimetière;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">L'un songe à l'Allemagne altière,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">L'autre an beau pays transalpin,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">L'autre à sa Pologne chérie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">—On ne peut pas vivre sans pain;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On ne peut pas non plus vivre sans la patrie.—</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Un proscrit, lassé de souffrir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Mourait; calme, il fermait son livre;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et je lui dis: "Pourquoi mourir?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Il me répondit: "Pourquoi vivre?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Puis il reprit: "Je me délivre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Adieu! je meurs. Néron Scapin</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Met aux fers la France flétrie..."</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">—On ne pent pas vivre sans pain;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Où ne peut pas non plus vivre sans la patrie.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"...Je meurs de ne plus voir les champs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Où je regardais l'aube naître,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">De ne plus entendre les chants</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Que j'entendais de ma fenêtre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Mon âme est où je ne puis être.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Sons quatre planches de sapin</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Enterrez-moi dans la prairie."</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">—On ne peut pas vivre sans pain;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On ne peut pas non plus vivre sans la patrie.</span></p> - - -<p>Then, in the later editions of the book, came the great and terrible -poem on the life and death of the miscreant marshal who gave the -watchword of massacre in the streets of Paris, and died by the -visitation of disease before the walls of Sebastopol. There is hardly a -more splendid passage of its kind in all the <i>Légende des -Siècles</i> than the description of the departure of the fleet in order -of battle from Constantinople for the Crimea; nor a loftier passage of -more pathetic austerity in all this book of <i>Châtiments</i> than the -final address of the poet to the miserable soul, disembodied at length -after long and loathsome suffering, of the murderer and traitor who had -earned no soldier's death.<a name="FNanchor_2_1" id="FNanchor_2_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_1" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> - -<p>And then come those majestic "last words" which will ring for ever in -the ears of men till manhood as well as poetry has ceased to have honor -among mankind. And then comes a poem so great that I hardly dare venture -to attempt a word in its praise. We cannot choose but think, as we read -or repeat it, that "such music was never made" since the morning stars -sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. This epilogue of -a book so bitterly and inflexibly tragic begins as with a peal of golden -bells, or an outbreak of all April in one choir of sunbright song; -proceeds in a graver note of deep and trustful exultation and yearning -towards the future; subsides again into something of a more subdued key, -while the poet pleads for his faith in a God of righteousness with the -righteous who are ready to despair; and rises from that tone of -awe-stricken and earnest pleading to such a height and rapture of -inspiration as no Hebrew psalmist or prophet ever soared beyond in his -divinest passion of aspiring trust and worship. It is simply impossible -that a human tongue should utter, a human hand should write, anything of -more supreme and transcendent beauty than the last ten stanzas of the -fourth division of this poem. The passionate and fervent accumulation of -sublimities, of marvelous images and of infinite appeal, leaves the -sense too dazzled, the soul too entranced and exalted, to appreciate at -first or in full the miraculous beauty of the language, the superhuman -sweetness of the song. The reader impervious to such impressions may -rest assured that what he admires in the prophecies or the psalms of -Isaiah or of David is not the inspiration of the text, but the warrant -and sign-manual of the councils and the churches which command him to -admire them on trust.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne possède-t-il pas toute la certitude?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dieu ne remplit-il pas ce monde, notre étude,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Du nadir au zénith?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Notre sagesse auprès de la sienne est démence.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et n'est-ce pas à lui que la clarté commence,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Et que l'ombre finit?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne voit-il pas ramp r les hydres sur leurs ventres?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne regarde-t-il pas jusqu'au fond de leurs antres</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Atlas et Pélion?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne connaît-il pas l'heure où la cigogne émigre?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sait-il pas ton entrée et ta sortie, ô tigre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Et ton antre, ô lion?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Hirondelle, réponds, aigle à l'aile sonore,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Parle, avez-vous des nids que l'Eternel ignore?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Ô cerf, quand l'as-tu fui?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Renard, ne vois-tu pas ses yeux dans la broussaille?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Loup, quand tu sens la nuit une herbe qui tressaille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Ne dis-tu pas: C'est lui!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'il sait tout cela, puisqu'il peut toute chose,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que ses doigts font jaillir les effets de la cause</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Comme un noyau d'un fruit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'il peut mettre un ver dans les pommes de l'arbre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et faire disperser les colonnes de marbre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Par le vent de la nuit;</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'il bat l'océan pareil au bœuf qui beugle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisqu'il est le voyant et que l'homme est l'aveugle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Puisqu'il est le milieu,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque son bras nous porte, et puisqu'à son passage</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La comète frissonne ainsi qu'en une cage</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Tremble une étoupe en feu;</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque l'obscure nuit le connaît, puisque l'ombre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le voit, quand il lui plaît, sauver la nef qui sombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Comment douterions-nous,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nous qui, fermes et purs, fiers dans nos agonies,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sommes debout devant toutes les tyrannies,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Pour lui seul, à genoux!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'ailleurs, pensons. Nos jours sont des joursd'amertume,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais, quand nous étendons les bras dans cette brume,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Nous sentons une main;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand nous marchons, courbés, dans l'ombre du martyre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nous entendons quelqu'un derrière nous nous dire:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">C'est ici le chemin.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô proscrits, l'avenir est aux peuples! Paix, gloire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Liberté, reviendront sur des chars de victoire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Aux foudroyants essieux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce crime qui triomphe est fumée et mensonge.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voilà ce que je puis affirmer, moi qui songe</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">L'œil fixé sur les cieux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les césars sont plus fiers que les vagues marines,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais Dieu dit:—Je mettrai ma boucle en leurs narines.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Et dans leur bouche un mors,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et je tes traînerai, qu'on cède ou bien qu'on lutte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Eux et leurs histrions et leurs joueurs de flûte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Dans l'ombre où sont les morts!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dieu dit; et le granit que foulait leur semelle</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'écroule, et les voilà disparus pêle-mêle</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Dans leurs prospérités!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aquilon! aquilon! qui viens battre nos portes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! dis-nous, si c'est toi, souffle, qui les emportes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Où les as-tu jetés?</span></p> - - -<p>Three years after the <i>Châtiments</i> Victor Hugo published the -<i>Contemplations</i>; the book of which he said that if the title did -not sound somewhat pretentious it might be called "the memoirs of a -soul." No book had ever in it more infinite and exquisite variety; no -concert ever diversified and united such inexhaustible melodies with -such unsurpassable harmonies. The note of fatherhood was never touched -more tenderly than in the opening verses of gentle counsel, whose -cadence is fresher and softer than the lapse of rippling water or the -sense of falling dew: the picture of the poet's two little daughters in -the twilight garden might defy all painters to translate it: the spirit, -force, and fun of the controversial poems, overflowing at once with good -humor, with serious thought, and with kindly indignation, give life and -charm to the obsolete questions of wrangling schools and pedants; and -the last of them, on the divine and creative power of speech, is at once -profound and sublime enough to grapple easily and thoroughly with so -high and deep a subject. The songs of childish loves and boyish fancies -are unequalled by any other poets known to me for their union of purity -and gentleness with a touch of dawning ardor arid a hint of shy delight: -<i>Lise, La Coccinelle, Vieille chanson du jeune temps</i>, are such -sweet miracles of simple perfection as we hardly find except in the old -songs of unknown great poets who died and left no name. The twenty-first -poem, a lyric idyl of but sixteen lines, has something more than the -highest qualities of Theocritus; in color and in melody it does but -equal the Sicilian at his best, but there are two lines at least in it -beyond his reach for depth and majesty of beauty. <i>Childhood</i> and -<i>Unity</i>, two poems of twelve and ten lines respectively, are a pair -of such flawless jewels as lie now in no living poet's casket. Among the -twenty-eight poems of the second book, if I venture to name with special -regard the second and the fourth, two songs uniting the subtle -tenderness of Shelley's with the frank simplicity of Shakespeare's; the -large and living land—scape in a letter dated from Tréport; the -tenth and the thirteenth poems, two of the most perfect love-songs in -the world, written (if the phrase be permissible) in a key of serene -rapture; the "morning's note," with its vision of the sublime sweetness -of life transfigured in a dream; <i>Twilight</i>, with its opening -touches of magical and mystic beauty; above all, the mournful and tender -magnificence of the closing poem, with a pathetic significance in the -double date appended to the text: I am ready to confess that it is -perhaps presumptuous to express a preference even for these over the -others. Yet perhaps it may be permissible to select for transcription -two of the sweetest and shortest among them.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vers votre jardin si beau,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si mes vers avaient des ailes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des ailes comme l'oiseau.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils voleraient, étincelles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vers votre foyer qui rit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si mes vers avaient des ailes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des ailes comme l'esprit.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Près de vous, purs et fidèles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils accourraient nuit et jour,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si mes vers avaient des ailes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des ailes comme l'amour.</span></p> - - -<p>Nothing of Shelley's exceeds this for limpid perfection of melody, -renewed in the next lyric with something of a deeper and more fervent -note of music.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si vous n'avez rien à me dire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi venir auprès de moi?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi me faire ce sourire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui tournerait la tête au roi?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si vous n'avez rien à me dire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi venir auprès de moi?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si vous n'avez rien à m'apprendre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi me pressez-vous la main?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur le rêve angélique et tendre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Auquel vous songez en chemin,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si vous n'avez rien à m'apprendre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi me pressez-vous la main?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si vous voulez que je m'en aille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi passez-vous par ici?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lorsque je vous vois, je tressaille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est ma joie et c'est mou souci.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si vous voulez que je m'en aille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourquoi passez-vous par ici?</span></p> - - -<p>In the third book, which brings us up to the great poet's -forty-second year, the noble poem called <i>Melancholia</i> has in it a -foretaste and a promise of all the passionate meditation, all the -studious and indefatigable pity, all the forces of wisdom and of mercy -which were to find their completer and supreme expression in <i>Les -Misérables.</i> In <i>Saturn</i> we may trace the same note of earnest -and thoughtful meditation on the mystery of evil, on the vision so long -cherished by mankind of some purgatorial world, the shrine of expiation -or the seat of retribution, which in the final volume of the <i>Légende -des Siècles</i> was toched again with a yet more august effect: the -poem there called <i>Inferi</i> resumes and expands the tragic thought -here first admitted into speech and first clothed round with music. The -four lines written beneath a crucifix may almost be said to sum up the -whole soul and spirit of Christian faith or feeling in the brief hour of -its early purity, revived in every age again for some rare and beautiful -natures—and for these alone.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous qui pleurez, venez à ce Dieu, car il pleure.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous qui souffrez, venez à lui, car il guérit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous qui tremblez, venez à lui, car il sourit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous qui passez, venez à lui, car il demeure.</span></p> - - -<p><i>La Statue</i>, with its grim swift glance over the worldwide -rottenness of imperial Rome, finds again an echo yet fuller and more -sonorous than the note which it repeats in the poem on Roman decadence -which forms the eighth division of the revised and completed <i>Légende -des Siècles.</i> The two delicately tender poems on the death of a -little child are well relieved by the more terrible tenderness of the -poem on a mother found dead of want among her four little children. In -this and the next poem, a vivid and ghastly photograph of vicious -poverty, we find again the same spirit of observant and vigilant -compassion that inspires and informs the great prose epic of suffering -which records the redemption of Jean Valjean: and in the next, suggested -by the sight (a sorrowful sight always, except perhaps to very small -children or adults yet more diminutive in mental or spiritual size) of a -caged lion, we recognize the depth of noble pity which moved its author -to write <i>Le Crapaud</i>—a poem redeemed in all rational men's -eyes from the imminent imputation of repulsive realism by the profound -and pathetic beauty of the closing lines—and we may recognize also -the imaginative and childlike sympathy with the traditional king of -beasts which inspired him long after to write <i>L'Épopée du Lion</i> -for the benefit of his grandchildren. <i>Insomnie</i>, a record of the -tribute exacted by the spirit from the body, when the impulse to work -and to create will not let the weary workman take his rest, but enforces -him, reluctant and recalcitrant, to rise and gird up his loins for labor -in the field of imaginative thought, is itself a piece of work well -worth the sacrifice even of the happiness of sleep. The verses on music, -suggested by the figure of a flute-playing shepherd on a bas-relief; the -splendid and finished picture of spring, softened rather than shadowed -by the quiet thought of death; the deep and tender fancy of the dead -child's return to its mother through the gateway of a second birth; the -grave sweetness and gentle fervor of the verses on the outcast and -detested things of the animal and the vegetable world; and, last, the -nobly thoughtful and eloquent poem on the greatness of such little -things as the fire on the shepherd's hearth confronting the star at -sunset, which may be compared with the <i>Prayer for all men</i> in the -<i>Feuilles d'Automne</i>; these at least demand a rapid word of -thankful recognition before we close the first volume of the -<i>Contemplations.</i></p> - -<p>The fourth book, as most readers will probably remember, contains the -poems written in memory of Victor Hugo's daughter, drowned by the -accidental capsizing of a pleasure-boat, just six months and seventeen -days after her marriage with the young husband who chose rather to share -her death than to save himself alone. These immortal songs of mourning -are almost too sacred for critical appreciation of even the most -reverent and subdued order. There are numberless touches in them of such -thrilling beauty, so poignant in their simplicity and so piercing in -their truth, that silence is perhaps the best or the only commentary on -anything so "rarely sweet and bitter." One only may perhaps be cited -apart from its fellows: the sublime little poem headed <i>Mors.</i></p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je vis cette faucheuse. Elle était dans son champ.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle allait à grands pas moissonnant et fauchant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Noir squelette laissant passer le crépuscule.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans l'ombre où l'on dirait que tout tremble et recule,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'homme suivait des yeux les lueurs de sa faulx.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et les triomphateurs sous les arcs triomphaux</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tombaient; elle changeait en désert Babylone,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le trône en échafaud et l'échafaud en trône,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les roses en fumier, les enfants en oiseaux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'or en cendre, et les yeux des mères en ruisseaux.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et les femmes criaient: Rends-nous ce petit être.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour le faire mourir, pourquoi l'avoir fait naître?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce n'était qu'un sanglot sur terre, en haut, en bas;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des mains aux doigts osseux sortaient des noirs grabats;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un vent froid bruissait dans les linceuls sans nombre;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les peuples éperdus semblaient sous la faulx sombre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un troupeau frissonnant qui dans l'ombre s'enfuit:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout était sous ses pieds deuil, épouvante et nuit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Derrière elle, le front baigné de douces flammes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un ange souriant portait la gerbe d'âmes.</span></p> - - -<p>The fifth book opens most fitly with an address to the noble poet who -was the comrade of the author's exile and the brother of his -self-devoted son-in-law. Even Hugo never wrote anything of more stately -and superb simplicity than this tribute of fatherly love and praise, so -well deserved and so royally bestowed. The second poem, addressed to the -son of a poet who had the honor to receive the greatest of all his kind -as a passing guest in the first days of his long exile, is as simple and -noble as it is gentle and austere. The third, written in reply to the -expostulations of an old friend and a distant kinsman, is that admirable -vindication of a man's right to grow wiser, and of his duty to speak the -truth as he comes to see it better, which must have imposed silence and -impressed respect on all assailants if respect for integrity and genius -were possible to the imbecile or the vile, and if silence or abstinence -from insult were possible to the malignant or the fool The epilogue, -appended nine years later to this high-minded and brilliant poem, is as -noble in imagination, in feeling, and in expression, as the finest page -in the <i>Châtiments.</i></p> - - -<h4><i>ÉCRIT EN 1855</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ajoute un post-scriptum après neuf ans. J'écoute;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Êtes-vous toujours là? Vous êtes mort sans doute,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Marquis; mais d'où je suis on peut parler aux morts.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ah! votre cercueil s'ouvre:—Où donc es tu?—Dehors.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme vous.—Es-tu mort?—Presque. J'habite l'ombre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis sur un rocher qu'environne l'eau sombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Écueil rongé des flots, de ténèbres chargé,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Où s'assied, ruisselant, le blême naufragé.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Eh bien, me dites-vous, après?—La solitude</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Autour de moi toujours a la même attitude;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je ne vois que l'abîme, et la mer, et les cieux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et les nuages noirs qui vont silencieux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mon toit, la nuit, frissonne, et l'ouragan le mêle</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aux souffles effrénés de l'onde et de la grêle;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quelqu'un semble clouer un crêpe à l'horizon;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'insulte dat de loin le seuil de ma maison;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le roc croule sous moi dès que mon pied s'y pose;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent semble avoir peur de m'approcher, et n'ose</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Me dire qu'en baissant la voix et qu'à demi</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'adieu mystérieux que me jette un ami.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La rumeur des vivants s'éteint diminuée.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout ce que j'ai rêvé s'est envolé, nuée!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur mes jours devenus fantômes, pâle et seul,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je regarde tomber l'infini, ce linceul.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et vous dites:—Après?—Sous un mont qui surplombe,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Près des flots, j'ai marqué la place de ma tombe;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ici, le bruit du gouffre est tout ce qu'on entend;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout est horreur et nuit—Après?—Je suis content.</span></p> - - -<p>The verses addressed to friends whose love and reverence had not -forsaken the exile—to Jules Janin, to Alexandre Dumas, above all -to Paul Meurice—are models of stately grace in their utterance of -serene and sublime resignation, of loyal and affectionate sincerity: but -those addressed to the sharers of his exile—to his wife, to his -children, to their friend—have yet a deeper spiritual music in the -sweet and severe perfection of their solemn cadence. I have but time to -name with a word of homage in passing the famous and faultless little -poem <i>Aux Feuillantines</i>, fragrant with the memory and musical as -the laugh of childhood; the memorial verses recurring here and there, -with such infinite and subtle variations on the same deep theme of -mourning or of sympathy; the great brief studies of lonely landscape, -imbued with such grave radiance and such noble melancholy, or kindled -with the motion and quickened by the music of the sea: but two poems at -all events I must select for more especial tribute of more thankful -recognition: the sublime and wonderful vision of the angel who was -neither life nor death, but love, more strong than either; and the all -but sublimer allegory couched in verse of such majestic resonance, which -shows us the star of Venus in heaven above the ruin of her island on -earth. The former and shorter of these is as excellent an example as -could be chosen of its author's sovereign simplicity of insight and of -style.</p> - - -<h4><i>APPARITION</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je vis un ange blanc qui passait sur ma tête;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son vol éblouissant apaisait la tempête,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et faisait taire au loin la mer pleine de bruit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Qu'est-ce que tu viens faire, ange, dans cette nuit?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lui dis-je. Il répondit:—Je viens prendre ton âme.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et j'eus peur, car je vis que c'était une femme;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et je lui dis, tremblant et lui tendant les bras:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Que me restera-t-il? car tu t'envoleras.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il ne répondit pas; le ciel que l'ombre assiège</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'éteignait...—Si tu prends mon âme, m'écriai-je.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Où l'emporteras-tu? montre-moi dans quel lieu.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il se taisait toujours.—O passant du ciel bleu,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Es-tu la mort? lui dis-je, ou bien es-tu la vie?—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et la nuit augmentait sur mon âme ravie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'ange devint noir, et dit:—Je suis l'amour.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais son front sombre était plus charmant que le jour,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et je voyais, dans l'ombre où brillaient ses prunelles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les astres à travers les plumes de ses ailes.</span></p> - - -<p>If nothing were left of Hugo but the sixth book of the -<i>Contemplations</i>, it would yet be indisputable among those who know -anything of poetry that he was among the foremost in the front rank of -the greatest poets of all time. Here, did space allow, it would be -necessary for criticism with any pretense to adequacy to say something -of every poem in turn, to pause for observation of some beauty beyond -reach of others at every successive page. In the first poem a sublime -humility finds such expression as should make manifest to the dullest -eye not clouded by malevolence and insolent conceit that when this -greatest of modern poets asserts in his own person the prerogative and -assumes for his own spirit the high office of humanity, to confront the -darkest problem and to challenge the utmost force of intangible and -invisible injustice as of visible and tangible iniquity, of all -imaginable as of all actual evil, of superhuman indifference as well as -of human wrongdoing, it is no merely personal claim that he puts -forward, no vainly egotistic arrogance that he displays; but the right -of a reasonable conscience and the duty of a righteous faith, common to -ail men alike in whom intelligence of right and wrong, perception of -duty or conception of conscience can be said to exist at all. If there -be any truth in the notion of any difference between evil and good more -serious than the conventional and convenient fabrications of doctrine -and assumption, then assuredly the meanest of his creatures in whom the -perception of this difference was not utterly extinct would have a right -to denounce an omnipotent evil-doer as justly amenable to the sentence -inflicted by the thunders of his own unrighteous judgment. How profound -and intense was the disbelief of Victor Hugo in the rule or in the -existence of any such superhuman malefactor could not be better shown -than by the almost polemical passion of his prophetic testimony to that -need for faith in a central conscience and a central will on which he -has insisted again and again as a crowning and indispensable, requisite -for moral and spiritual life. From the sublime daring, the -self-confidence born of self-devotion, which finds lyrical utterance in -the majestic verses headed <i>Ibo</i>, through the humble and haughty -earnestness of remonstrance and appeal—"humble to God, haughty to -man"—which pervades the next three poems, the meditative and -studious imagination of the poet passes into the fuller light and larger -air of thought which imbues and informs with immortal life every line of -the great religious poem called <i>Pleurs dans la nuit.</i> In this he -touches the highest point of poetic meditation, as in the epilogue to -the <i>Châtiments</i>, written four months earlier, he had touched the -highest point of poetic rapture possible to the most ardent of believers -in his faith and the most unapproachable master of his art. Where all is -so lofty in its coherence of construction, so perfect in its harmony of -composition, it seems presumptuous to indicate any special miracle of -inspired workmanship: yet, as Hugo in his various notes on mediaeval -architecture was wont to select for exceptional attention and peculiar -eloquence of praise this or that part or point of some superb and -harmonious building, so am I tempted to dwell for a moment on the -sublime imagination, the pathetic passion, of the verses which render -into music the idea of a terrene and material purgatory, with its -dungeons of flint and cells of clay wherein the spirit imprisoned and -imbedded may envy the life and covet the suffering of the meanest animal -that toils on earth; and to set beside this wonderful passage that other -which even in a poem so thoroughly imbued with hope and faith finds -place and voice for expression of the old mysterious and fantastic -horror of the grave, more perfect than ever any mediæval painter or -sculptor could achieve.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le soir vient; l'horizon s'emplit d'inquiétude;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'herbe tremble et bruit comme une multitude;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">Le fleuve blanc reluit;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le paysage obscur prend les veines des marbres;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces hydres que, le jour, on appelle des arbres,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">Se tordent dans la nuit.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le mort est seul. Il sent la nuit qui le dévore.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand naît le doux matin, tout l'azur de l'aurore,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Tous ses rayons si beaux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout l'amour des oiseaux et leurs chansons sans nombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vont aux berceaux dorés; et, la nuit, toute l'ombre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Aboutit aux tombeaux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il entend des soupirs dans les fosses voisines;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il sent la chevelure affreuse des racines</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Entrer dans son cercueil;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il est l'être vaincu dont s'empare la chose;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il sent un doigt obscur, sous sa paupière close,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Lui retirer son œil.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il a froid; car le soir qui mêle à son haleine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les ténèbres, l'horreur, le spectre et le phalène,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Glace ces durs grabats;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le cadavre, lié de bandelettes blanches,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Grelotte, et dans sa bière entend les quatre planches</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Qui lui parlent tout bas.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'une dit:—Je fermais ton coffre-fort—Et l'autre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dit:—J'ai servi de porte au toit qui fut le nôtre.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">L'autre dit:—Aux beaux jours,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La table où rit l'ivresse et que le vin encombre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'était moi.—L'autre dit:—J'étais le chevet sombre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">Du lit de tes amours.</span></p> - - -<p>Among all the poems which follow, some exquisite in their mystic -tenderness as the elegiac stanzas on <i>Claire</i> and the appealing -address to a friend unknown (<i>À celle qui est voilée</i>), others -possessed with the same faith and wrestling with the same questions as -beset and sustained the writer of the poem at which we have just rapidly -and reverently glanced, there are three at least which demand—at -any rate one passing word of homage. The solemn song of meditation "at -the window by night" seems to me to render in its first six lines the -aspects and sounds of sea and cloud and wind and trees and stars with an -utterly incomparable magic of interpretation.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les étoiles, points d'or, percent les branches noires;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le flot huileux et lourd décompose ses moires</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Sur l'océan blêmi;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les nuages ont l'air d'oiseaux prenant la fuite;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Par moments le vent parle, et dit des mots sans suite,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Comme un homme endormi.</span></p> - - -<p>No poet but one could have written the three stanzas, so full of -infinite sweetness and awe, inscribed "to the angels who see us."</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Passant, qu'es-tu? je te connais.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais, étant spectre, ombre et nuage,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu n'as plus de sexe ni d'âge.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Je suis ta mère, et je venais!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Et toi dont l'aile hésite et brille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dont l'œil est noyé de douceur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'es-tu, passant?—Je suis ta sœur.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Et toi, qu'es-tu?—Je suis ta fille.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Et toi, qu'es-tu, passant?—Je suis</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Celle à qui tu disais: Je t'aime!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Et toi?—Je suis ton âme même.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! cachez-moi, profondes nuits!/</span></p> - - -<p>Nor could any other hand have achieved the pathetic perfection of the -verses in which just thirty years since, twelve years to a day after the -loss of his daughter, and fifteen years to a day before the return of -liberty which made possible the return of Victor Hugo to France, his -claims to the rest into which he now has entered, and his reasons for -desiring the attainment of that rest, found utterance unexcelled for -divine and deep simplicity by any utterance of man on earth.</p> - - -<h4><i>EN FRAPPANT À UNE PORTE</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai perdu mon père et ma mère,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mon premier-né, bien jeune, hélas!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et pour moi la nature entière</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Sonne le glas.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je dormais entre mes deux frères;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Enfants, nous étions trois oiseaux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Hélas! le sort change en deux bières</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Leurs deux berceaux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je t'ai perdue, ô fille chère,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toi qui remplis, ô mon orgueil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout mon destin de la lumière</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">De ton cercueil!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai su monter, j'ai su descendre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai vu l'aube et l'ombre en mes cieux.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai connu la pourpre, et la cendre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Qui me va mieux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai connu les ardeurs profondes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai connu les sombres amours;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai vu fuir les ailes, les ondes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Les vents, les jours.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai sur ma tête des orfraies;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai sur tous mes travaux l'affront,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au pied la poudre, au cœur des plaies,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">L'épine au front.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai des pleurs à mon œil qui pense,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des trous à ma robe en lambeau;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je n'ai rien à la conscience;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Ouvre, tombeau.</span></p> - - -<p>Last comes the magnificent and rapturous hymn of universal redemption -from suffering as from sin, the prophetic vision of evil absorbed by -good, and the very worst of spirits transfigured into the likeness of -the very best, in which the daring and indomitable faith of the seer -finds dauntless and supreme expression in choral harmonies of unlimited -and illimitable hope. The epilogue which dedicates the book to the -daughter whose grave was now forbidden ground to her father—so long -wont to keep there the autumnal anniversary of his mourning—is the very -crown and flower of the immortal work which it inscribes, if we may say -so, rather to the presence than to the memory of the dead.</p> - -<p>Not till the thirtieth year from the publication of these two volumes -was the inexhaustible labor of the spirit which inspired them to cease -for a moment—and then, among us at least, for ever. Three years -afterwards appeared the first series of the <i>Légende des -Siècles</i>, to be followed nineteen years later by the second, and by -the final complementary volume six years after that: so that between the -inception and the conclusion of the greatest single work accomplished in -the course of our century a quarter of that century had -elapsed—with stranger and more tragic evolution of events than any -poet or any seer could have foretold or foreseen as possible. Three -years again from this memorable date appeared the great epic and tragic -poem of contemporary life and of eternal humanity which gave us all the -slowly ripened fruit of the studies and emotions, the passions and the -thoughts, the aspiration and the experience, brought finally to their -full and perfect end in <i>Les Misérables.</i> As the key-note of -<i>Notre-Dame de Paris</i> was doom—the human doom of suffering to -be nobly or ignobly endured—so the key-note of its author's next -romance was redemption by acceptance of suffering and discharge of duty -in absolute and entire obedience to the utmost exaction of conscience -when it calls for atonement, of love when it calls for sacrifice of all -that makes life more endurable than death. It is obvious that no account -can here be given of a book which if it required a sentence would -require a volume to express the character of its quality or the variety -of its excellence—the one unique, the latter infinite as the -unique and infinite spirit whose intelligence and whose goodness gave it -life.</p> - - - -<p>Two years after <i>Les Misérables</i> appeared the magnificent book of -meditations on the mission of art in the world, on the duty of human -thought towards humanity, inscribed by Victor Hugo with the name of -William Shakespeare. To allow that it throws more light on the greatest -genius of our own century than on the greatest genius of the age of -Shakespeare is not to admit that it is not rich in valuable and noble -contemplations or suggestions on the immediate subject of Shakespeare's -work; witness the admirably thoughtful and earnest remarks on Macbeth, -the admirably passionate and pathetic reflections on Lear. The splendid -eloquence and the heroic enthusiasm of Victor Hugo never found more -noble and sustained expression than in this volume—the spontaneous and -inevitable expansion of a projected preface to his son's incomparable -translation of Shakespeare. The preface actually prefixed to it is -admirable for concision, for insight, and for grave historic humor. It -appeared a year after the book which (so to speak) had grown out of it; -andin the same year appeared the <i>Chansons des Rues et des Bois</i> The -miraculous dexterity of touch, the dazzling mastery of metre, the -infinite fertility in variations on the same air of frolic and -thoughtful fancy, would not apparently allow the judges of the moment to -perceive or to appreciate the higher and deeper qualities displayed in -this volume of lyric idyls. The prologue is a superb example of the -power peculiar to its author above all other poets; the power of seizing -on some old symbol or image which may have been in poetic use ever since -verse dawned upon the brain of man, and informing it again as with life, -and transforming it anew as by fire. Among innumerable exercises and -excursions of dainty but indefatigable fancy there are one or two -touches of a somewhat deeper note than usual which would hardly be -misplaced in the gravest and most ambitious works of imaginative genius. -The twelve lines (of four syllables each) addressed <i>À la belle -Imperieuse</i> are such, for example, as none but a great poet of passion, -a master of imaginative style, could by any stroke of chance or at any -cost of toil have written.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'amour, panique</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De la raison,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Se communique</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Par le frisson.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Laissez-moi dire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">N'accordez rien.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si je soupire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Chantez, c'est bien.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si je demeure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Triste, à vos pieds,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et si je pleure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est bien, riez.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un homme semble</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Souvent trompeur.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais si je tremble,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Belle, ayez peur.</span></p> - - -<p>The sound of the songs of a whole woodland seems to ring like audible -spring sunshine through the adorable song of love and youth rejoicing -among the ruins of an abbey.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Seuls tous deux, ravis, chantants!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Comme on s'aime!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme on cueille le printemps</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Que Dieu sème!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quels rires étincelants</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Dans ces ombres</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pleines jadis de fronts blancs.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">De cœurs sombres!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On est tout frais mariés.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">On s'envoie</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les charmants cris variés</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">De la joie.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Purs ébats mêlés au vent</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Qui frissonne!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Gaîtés que le noir couvent</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Assaisonne!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On effeuille des jasmins</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Sur la pierre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Où l'abbesse joint ses mains</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">En prière.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses tombeaux, de croix marqués,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Font partie</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De ces jeux, un peu piqués</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Par l'ortie.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ou se cherche, on se poursuit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">On sent croître</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ton aube, amour, dans la nuit</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Du vieux cloître.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On s'en va se becquetant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">On s'adore,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On s'embrasse à chaque instant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Puis encore,</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sous les piliers, les arceaux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Et les marbres.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est l'histoire des oiseaux</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Dans les arbres.</span></p> - - -<p>The inexhaustible exuberance of fancies lavished on the study of the -natural church, built by the hawthorn and the nettle in the depth of the -living wood, with foliage and wind and flowers, leaves the reader not -unfit for such reading actually dazzled with delight: In a far different -key, the <i>Souvenir des vieilles guerres</i> is one of Hugo's most -pathetic and characteristic studies of homely and heroic life. The -dialogue which follows, between the irony of skepticism and the -enthusiasm of reason, on the progressive ascension of mankind, is at -once sublime and subdued in the fervent tranquillity of its final tone: -and the next poem, on the so-called "great age" and its dwarf of a -Cæsar with the sun for a periwig, has in it a whole volume of history -and of satire condensed into nine stanzas of four lines of five -syllables apiece.</p> - - -<h4><i>LE GRAND SIÈCLE</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce siècle a la forme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'un monstrueux char.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa croissance énorme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sous un nain césar.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son air de prodige,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa gloire qui ment,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mêlent le vertige</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À l'écrasement.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Louvois pour ministre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Scarron pour griffon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est un chant sinistre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur un air bouffon.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur sa double roue</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le grand char descend;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'une est dans la boue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'autre est dans le sang.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La mort au carrosse</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Attelle—où va-t-il?—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lavrillière atroce,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Roquelaure vil.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme un geai dans l'arbre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le roi s'y tient fier;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son cœur est de marbre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son ventre est de chair.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On a pour sa nuque</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et son front vermeil</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fait une perruque</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Avec le soleil.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il règne et végète,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Effrayant zéro</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur qui se projette</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'ombre du bourreau.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce trône est la tombe;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et sur le pavé</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quelque chose en tombe</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'on n'a point lavé.</span></p> - - -<p>The exquisite poem on the closure of the church already described for -the winter is as radiant with humor as with tenderness: and the epilogue -responds in cadences of august antiphony to the moral and imaginative -passion which imbues with life and fire the magnificent music of the -prologue.</p> - -<p>In the course of the next four years Victor Hugo published the last -two great works which were to be dated from the haven of his exile. It -would be the very ineptitude of impertinence for any man's presumption -to undertake the classification or registry of his five great romances -in positive order of actual merit: but I may perhaps be permitted to say -without fear of deserved rebuke that none is to me personally a treasure -of greater price than <i>Les Travailleurs de la Mer.</i> The splendid -energy of the book makes the superhuman energy of the hero seem not only -possible but natural, and his triumph over all physical impossibilities -not only natural but inevitable. Indeed, when glancing at the -animadversions of a certain sort of critics on certain points or -passages in this and in the next romance of its author, I am perpetually -inclined to address them in the spirit—were it worth while to -address them in any wise at all—after the fashion if not after the -very phrase of Mirabeau's reply to a less impertinent objector. Victor -Hugo's acquaintance with navigation or other sciences may or may not -have been as imperfect as Shakespeare's acquaintance with geography and -natural history; the knowledge of such a man's ignorance or inaccuracy -in detail is in either case of exactly equal importance: and the -importance of such knowledge is for all men of sense and candor exactly -equivalent to zero.</p> - - - -<p>Between the tragedy of Gilliatt and the tragedy of Gwynplaine Victor -Hugo published nothing but the glorious little poem on the slaughter of -Mentana, called <i>La Voix de Guernesey</i>, and (in the same year) the -eloquent and ardent effusion of splendid and pensive enthusiasm prefixed -to the manual or guide-book which appeared on the occasion of the -international exhibition at Paris three years before the collapse of the -government which then kept out of France the Frenchmen most regardful of -her honor and their own. In the year preceding that collapse he -published <i>L'Homme qui Rit</i>; a book which those who read it aright -have always ranked and will always rank among his masterpieces. A year -and eight months after the fall of the putative Bonaparte he published -the terrible register of <i>L'Année Terrible.</i> More sublime wisdom, -more compassionate equity, more loyal self-devotion never found -expression in verse of more varied and impassioned and pathetic -magnificence. The memorial poem in which Victor Hugo so royally repaid, -with praise beyond all price couched in verse beyond all praise, the -loyal and constant devotion of Théophile Gautier, bears the date of All -Souls' Day in the autumn of 1872. For tenderness and nobility of -mingling aspiration and recollection, recollection of combatant and -triumphant youth, aspiration towards the serene and sovereign ascension -out of age through death, these majestic lines are worthy not merely of -eternal record, but far more than that—of a distinct and a -distinguished place among the poems of Victor Hugo. They are not to be -found in the <i>édition ne varietur</i>: which, I must needs repeat, -will have to be altered or modified by more variations than one before -it can be accepted as a sufficient or standard edition of the complete -and final text. In witness of this I cite the closing lines of a poem -now buried in "the tomb of Théophile Gautier"—a beautiful volume -which has long been out of print.</p> - - - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ami, je sens du sort la sombre plénitude;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai commencé la mort par de la solitude,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je vois mon profond soir vaguement s'étoiler.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voici l'heure où je vais, aussi moi, m'en aller.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mon fil trop long frissonne et touche presque au glaive;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent qui t'emporta doucement me soulève,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et je vais suivre ceux qui m'aimaient, moi banni:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Leur œil fixe m'attire au fond de l'infini.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'y cours. Ne fermez pas la porte funéraire.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Passons, car c'est la loi: nul ne peut s'y soustraire;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout penche; et ce grand siècle avec tous ses rayons</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entre en cette ombre immense où, pâles, nous fuyons.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! quel farouche bruit font dans le crépuscule</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les chênes qu'on abat pour le bûcher d'Hercule!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les chevaux de la Mort se mettent à hennir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et sont joyeux, car l'âge éclatant va finir;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce siècle altier qui sut dompter le vent contraire.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Expire...—O Gautier, toi, leur égal et leur frère,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu pars après Dumas, Lamartine et Musset.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'onde antique est tarie où l'on rajeunissait;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme il n'est plus de Styx il n'est plus de Jouvence.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le dur faucher avec sa large lame avance</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pensif et pas à pas vers le reste du blé;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est mon tour; et la nuit emplit mon œil troublé</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui, devinant, hélas, l'avenir des colombes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pleure sur des berceaux et sourit à des tombes.</span></p> - - -<p>Two years after the year of terror, the poet who had made its memory -immortal by his record of its changes and its chances gave to the world -his heroic and epic romance of <i>Quatrevingt-treize</i>; instinct with -all the passion of a deeper and wider chivalry than that of old, and -touched with a more than Homeric tenderness for motherhood and -childhood. This book was written in the space of five months and -twenty-seven days. The next year witnessed only the collection of the -second series of his <i>Actes et Paroles</i> (<i>Pendant l'Exil</i>), -and the publication of two brief and memorable pamphlets: the one a -simple and pathetic record of the two beloved sons taken from him in -such rapid succession, the other a terse and earnest plea with the -judges who had spared the life of a marshal condemned on a charge of -high treason to spare likewise the life of a private soldier condemned -for a transgression of military discipline. Most readers will be glad to -remember that on this occasion at least the voice of the intercessor was -not uplifted in vain. A year afterwards he published the third series of -<i>Actes et Paroles</i> (<i>Depuis l'Exil</i>), with a prefatory essay -full of noble wisdom, of pungent and ardent scorn, of thoughtful and -composed enthusiasm, on the eternal contrast and the everlasting battle -between the spirit of clerical Rome and the spirit of republican -Paris.</p> - -<p>"Moi qu'un petit enfant rend tout à fait stupide," I do not propose -to undertake a review of <i>L'Art d'être Grand-père.</i> It must -suffice here to register the fact that the most absolutely and adorably -beautiful book ever written appeared a year after the volume just -mentioned, and some months after the second series of the <i>Légende -des Siècles</i>; that there is not a page in it which is not above all -possible eulogy or thanksgiving; that nothing was ever conceived more -perfect than such poems—to take but a small handful for -samples—as <i>Un manque, La sieste. Choses du soir, Ce que dit le -public</i> (at the Jardin des Plantes or at the Zoological Gardens; ages -of public ranging from five, which is comparatively young, to seven, -which is positively old), <i>Chant sur le berceau</i>, the song for a -round dance of children, <i>Le pot cassé, La mise en liberté, Jeanne -endormie</i>, the delicious <i>Chanson de grand-père</i>, the glorious -<i>Chanson d'ancêtre</i>, or the third of the divine and triune poems -on the sleep of a little child; that after reading these—to say -nothing of the rest—it seems natural to feel as though no other -poet had ever known so fully or enjoyed so wisely or spoken so sweetly -and so well the most precious of truths, the loveliest of loves, the -sweetest and the best of doctrines.</p> - -<p>The first of all to see the light appeared in a magazine which has -long ago collapsed under the influence of far other writers than the -greatest of the century. Every word of the thirty-eight lines which -compose <i>La Sieste de Jeanne</i>—if any speech or memory of man -endure so long—will be treasured as tenderly by generations as -remote from the writer's as now treasure up with thankful wonder and -reverence every golden fragment and jeweled spar from the wreck of -Simonides or of Sappho. It has all the subtle tenderness which invests -the immortal song of Danaë; and the union of perfect grace with living -passion, as it were the suffusion of human flesh and blood with heavenly -breath and fire, brings back once again upon our thoughts the name which -is above every name in lyric song. There is not one line which could -have been written and set where it stands by the hand of any lesser than -the greatest among poets. For once even the high priest and even the -high priestess of baby-worship who have made their names immortal among -our own by this especial and most gracious attribute—even William -Blake and Christina Rossetti for once are distanced in the race of song, -on their own sweet ground, across their own peculiar field of Paradise. -Not even in the pastures that heard his pipe keep time to the "Songs of -Innocence," or on the "wet bird-haunted English lawn" set ringing as -from nursery windows at summer sunrise to the faultless joyous music and -pealing birdlike laughter of her divine "Sing-Song," has there sounded -quite such a note as this from the heaven of heavens in which little -babies are adored by great poets, the frailest by the most potent of -divine and human kind. And above the work in this lovely line of all -poets in all time but one, there sits and smiles eternally the adorable -baby who helps us for ever to forget all passing perversities of -Christianized socialism or bastard Cæsarism which disfigure and -diminish the pure proportions and the noble charm of "Aurora Leigh." -Even the most memorable children born to art in Florence, begotten upon -stone or canvas by Andrea del Sarto or by Luca della Robbia's very self, -must yield to that one the crown of sinless empire and the palm of -powerless godhead which attest the natural mystery of their omnipotence; -and which haply may help to explain why no accumulated abominations of -cruelty and absurdity which inlay the record of its history and incrust -the fabric of its creed can utterly corrode the natal beauty or corrupt -the primal charm of a faith which centres at its opening round the -worship of a new-born child.</p> - -<p>The most accurate and affectionate description that I ever saw or -heard given of a baby's incomparable smile, when graciously pleased to -permit with courtesy and accept with kindness the votive touch of a -reverential finger on its august little cheek, was given long since in -the text accompanying a rich and joyous design of childish revel by -Richard Doyle. A baby in arms is there contemplating the riotous -delights of its elders, fallen indeed from the sovereign state of -infancy, but not yet degenerate into the lower life of adults, with that -bland and tacit air of a large-minded and godlike tolerance which the -devout observer will not fail to have remarked in the aspect of babies -when unvexed and unincensed by any cross accident or any human -shortcoming on the part of their attendant ministers. Possibly a hand -which could paint that inexpressible smile might not fail also of the -ability to render in mere words some sense of the ineffable quality -which rests upon every line and syllable of this most divine poem. There -are lines in it—but after all this is but an indirect way of -saying that it is a poem by Victor Hugo—which may be taken as -tests of the uttermost beauty, the extreme perfection, the supreme -capacity and charm, to which the language of men can attain. It might -seem as if the Fates could not allow two men capable of such work to -live together in one time of the world; and that Shelley therefore had -to die in his thirtieth year as soon as Hugo had attained his -twentieth.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle fait au milieu du jour son petit somme;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Car l'enfant a besoin du rêve plus que l'homme,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cette terre est si laide alors qu'on vient du ciel!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'enfant cherche à revoir Chérubin, Ariel,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les camarades, Puck, Titania, les fées,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et ses mains quand il dort sont par Dieu réchauffées.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! comme nous serions surpris si nous voyions,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au fond de ce sommeil sacré, plein de rayons,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces paradis ouverts dans l'ombre, et ces passages</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'étoiles qui font signe aux enfants d'être sages,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces apparitions, ces éblouissements!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Donc, à l'heure où les feux du soleil sont calmants,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand tout la nature écoute et se recueille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vers midi, quand les nids se taisent, quand la feuille</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La plus tremblante oublie un instant de frémir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jeanne a cette habitude aimable de dormir;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et la mère un moment respire et se repose,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Car on se lasse, même à servir une rose.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses beaux petits pieds nus dont le pas est peu sûr</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dorment; et son berceau, qu'entoure un vague azur</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ainsi qu'une auréole entoure une immortelle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Semble un nuage fait avec de la dentelle;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On croit, en la voyant dans ce frais berceau-là,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voir une lueur rose au fond d'un falbala;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On la contemple, on rit, on sent fuir la tristesse,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et c'est un astre, ayant de plus la petitesse;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'ombre, amoureuse d'elle, a l'air de l'adorer;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le vent retient son souffle et n'ose respirer.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Soudain dans l'humble et chaste alcôve maternelle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Versant tout le matin qu'elle a dans sa prunelle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle ouvre la paupière, étend un bras charmant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Agite un pied, puis l'autre, et, si divinement</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que des fronts dans l'azur se penchent pour l'entendre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle gazouille...—Alors, de sa voix la plus tendre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Couvant des yeux l'enfant que Dieu fait rayonner,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cherchant le plus doux nom qu'elle puisse donner</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À sa joie, à son ange en fleur, à sa chimère:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Te voilà réveillée, horreur! lui dit sa mère.</span></p> - - -<p>If the last word on so divine a subject could ever be said, it surely -might well be none other than this. But with workmen of the very highest -order there is no such thing as a final touch, a point at which they -like others are compelled to draw bridle, a summit on which even their -genius also may abide but while a man takes breath, and halt without a -hope or aspiration to pass beyond it.</p> - -<p>Far different in the promise or the menace of its theme, the poet's -next work, issued in the following year, was one in spirit with the -inner spirit of this book. In sublime simplicity of conception and in -sovereign accomplishment of its design, <i>Le Pape</i> is excelled by no -poem of Hugo's or of man's. In the glory of pure pathos it is perhaps -excelled, as in the divine long-suffering of all-merciful wisdom it can -be but equalled, by the supreme utterance of <i>La Pitié Suprême.</i> -In splendor of changeful music and imperial magnificence of illustration -the two stand unsurpassed for ever, side by side. A third poem, -attacking at once the misbelief or rather the infidelity which studies -and rehearses "the grammar of assent" to creeds and articles of -religion, and the blank disbelief or denial which rejects all ideals and -all ideas of spiritual life, is not so rich even in satire as in reason, -so earnest even in rejection of false doctrine as in assertion of free -belief. Upon this book no one can hope to write anything so nearly -adequate and so thoroughly worth reading as is the tribute paid to it by -Théodore de Banville—the Simonides Melicertes of France.</p> - -<p>In the midst of our confused life, turbulent and flat, bustling and -indifferent, where books and plays, dreams and poems, driven down a wind -of oblivion, are like the leaves which November sweeps away, and fly -past, without giving us time to tell one from another, in a vague whirl -and rush, at times there appears a new book by Victor Hugo, and lights -up, resounds, murmurs, and sings at once everything.</p> - -<p>The shining, sounding, fascinating verse, with its thousand surprises -of sound, of color, of harmony, breaks forth like a rich concert, and -ever newly stirred, dazzled and astonished, as if we were hearing verses -for the first time, we remain stupefied with wonder before the -persistent prodigy of the great seer, the great thinker, the unheard-of -artist, self-transfigured without ceasing, always new and always like -himself. It would be impertinent to say of him that he makes progress; -and yet I find no other word to express the fact that every hour, every -minute, he adds something new, something, yet more exact and yet more -caressing, to that swing of syllables, that melodious play of rhyme -renascent of itself, which is the grace and the invincible power of -French poetry,—if English ears could but learn or would but hear -it; whereas usually they have never been taught even the rudiments of -French prosody, and receive the most perfect cadences of the most -glorious or the most exquisite French poetry as a schoolboy who has not -yet learnt scansion might receive the melodies of Catullus or of -Virgil.</p> - -<p>Let me be forgiven a seeming blasphemy; but since the time of -periphrasis is over the real truth of things must be said of them. Well, -then, the great peril of poetry is the risk it runs of becoming a -weariness: for it may be almost sublime, and yet perfectly wearisome: -but, on the contrary, with all its bewildering flight, its vast -circumference, and the rage of its genius grown drunk with things -immeasurable, the poetry of Victor Hugo is of itself <i>amusing</i> into -the bargain—amusing as a fairy tale, as a many-colored festival, -as a lawless and charming comedy; for in them words play unexpected -parts, take on themselves a special and intense life, put on strange or -graceful faces, clash one against another either cymbals of gold or urns -of crystal, exchange flashes of living light and dawn.</p> - -<p>And let no one suspect in my choice of an epithet any idea of -diminution; a garden-box on the window-sill may be thoroughly wearisome, -and an immense forest may be amusing, with its shades wherein the -nightingale sings, its giant trees with the blue sky showing through -them, its mossy shelters where the silver brooklet hums its tune through -the moistened greenery. Ay,—this is one of its -qualities,—the poetry of Hugo can be read, can be devoured as one -devours a new novel, because it is varied, surprising, full of the -unforeseen, clear of commonplaces, like nature itself; and of such a -limpid clearness as to be within the reach of every creature who can -read, even when it soars to the highest summits of philosophy and -idealism. In fact, to be obscure, confused, unintelligible, is not a -rare quality, nor one difficult to acquire; and the first fool you may -fell in with can easily attain to it. In this magnificent poem which has -just appeared—as, for that matter, in all his other -poems—what Victor Hugo does is just to dispel and scatter to the -winds of heaven those lessons, those fogs, those rubbish-heaps, those -clouds of dark bewildered words with which the sham wise men of all ages -have overlaid the plain evidence of truth.</p> - -<p>"The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo"; and I, -who cannot pretend even to the gift of eloquence proper to the son of -Maia, will not presume to add a word of less valuable homage to the -choicer tribute of Banville. The three poems last mentioned were -respectively published in three successive years: and in the same year -with <i>Religions et Religion</i> Victor Hugo published a fourth volume, -<i>L'Âne</i>, in which the questions of human learning and of human -training were handled with pathetic ardor and sympathetic irony. It -would be superfluous if not insolent to add that the might of hand, the -magic of utterance, the sovereign charm of sound, and the superb -expression of sense, are equal and incomparable in all.</p> - -<p>And next year Victor Hugo gave us <i>Les Quatre Vents de -l'Esprit.</i> In the first division, the book of satire, every page -bears witness that the hand which wrote the <i>Châtiments</i> had -neither lost its strength nor forgotten its cunning; it is full of keen -sense, of wise wrath, of brilliant reason and of merciful equity, The -double drama which follows is one of the deepest and sweetest and -richest in various effect among the masterpieces of its author. In -Margarita we breathe again the same fresh air of heroic mountain-ranges -and woodlands inviolable, of winds and flowers and all fair things and -thoughts, which blows through all the brighter and more gracious -interludes of the <i>Légende des Siècles</i>: the figures of Gallus, -the libertine by philosophy, and Gunich, the philosopher of -profligacy—the former a true man and true lover at heart, the -latter a cynic and a courtier to the core—are as fresh in their -novelty as the figures of noble old age and noble young love are fresh -in their renewal and reimpression of types familiar to all hearts since -the sunrise of <i>Hernani.</i> The tragedy which follows this little -romantic comedy is but the more penetrative and piercing in its pathos -and its terror for its bitter and burning vein of realism and of humor. -The lyric book is a casket of jewels rich enough to outweigh the whole -wealth of many a poet. After the smiling song of old times, the stately -song of to-day with its other stars and its other roses, in sight of the -shadow where grows the deathless flower of death, pale and haggard, with -its shadowy perfume: the song of all sweet waking dreams and visions, -and sweetest among them all the vision of a tyrant loyally slain: the -song on hearing a princess sing, sweeter than all singing and simple as -"the very virtue of compassion": the song of evening and rest from -trouble, and prayer in sorrow, and hope in death: the many-colored and -sounding song of seaside winter nights: the song of three nests, the -reed-warbler's and the martlet's made with moss and straw, in the wall -or on the water, and love's with glances and smiles, in the lover's -inmost heart: the song of the watcher by twilight on the cliff, which -strikes a note afterwards repeated and prolonged in the last issue of -the <i>Légende des Siècles</i>, full of mystery and mourning and fear -and faith: the brief deep note of bewildered sorrow that succeeds it: -the great wild vision of death and night, cast into words which have the -very sound of wind and storm and water, the very shape and likeness of -things actually touched or seen: the soft and sublime song of dawn as it -rises on the thinker deep sunk in meditation on death and on life to -come: the strange dialogue underground, grim and sweet, between the -corpse and the rose-tree: the song of exile in May, sweet as flowers and -bitter as tears: the lofty poem of suffering which rejects the old Roman -refuge of stoic suicide: the light swift song of a lover's quarrel -between the earth and the sun in winter time: the unspeakably sweet song -of the daisy that smiles at coming winter, the star that smiles at -coming night, the soul that smiles at coming death: the most pathetic -and heroic song of all, the cry of exile towards the graves of the -beloved over sea, that weeps and is not weary: the simple and sublime -verses on the mountain desolation to which truth and conscience were the -guides: the four magnificent studies of sea and land, <i>Promenades dans -les rochers</i>: the admirable verses on that holy mystery of terror -perceptible in the most glorious works alike of nature and of poetry: -all these and more are fitly wound up by the noble hymn on planting the -oak of the United States of Europe in the garden of the house of exile. -A few of the briefer among these may here be taken as examples of a gift -not merely unequalled but unapproached by any but the greatest among -poets. And first we may choose the following unsurpassable psalm of -evensong.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un hymne harmonieux sort des feuilles du tremble;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les voyageurs craintifs, qui vont la nuit ensemble.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Haussent la voix dans l'ombre où l'on doit se hâter</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Laissez tout ce qui tremble</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 14em;">Chanter.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les marins fatigués sommeillent sur le gouffre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La mer bleue ou Vésuve épand ses flots de soufre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Se tait dès qu'il s'éteint, et cesse de gémir.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Laissez tout ce qui souffre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 14em;">Dormir.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand la vie est mauvaise on la rêve meilleure.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les yeux en pleurs au ciel se lèvent à toute heure;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'espoir vers Dieu se tourne et Dieu l'entend crier.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Laissez tout ce qui pleure</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 14em;">Prier.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est pour renaître ailleurs qu'ici-bas on succombe.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout ce qui tourbillonne appartient à la tombe.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il faut dans le grand tout tôt ou tard s'absorber.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Laissez tout ce qui tombe</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 14em;">Tomber!</span></p> - - -<p>Next, we may take two songs of earlier and later life, whose contrast -is perfect concord.</p> - - - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<h4><i>CHANSON D'AUTREFOIS</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">Jamais elle ne raille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Étant un calme esprit;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Mais toujours elle rit.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voici des brins de mousse avec des brins de paille;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Fauvette des roseaux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Fais ton nid sur les eaux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Quand sous la clarté douce</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Qui sort de tes beaux yeux</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">On passe, on est joyeux.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voici des brins de paille avec des brins de mousse;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Martinet de l'azur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Fais ton nid dans mon mur.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Dans l'aube avril se mire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Et les rameaux fleuris</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Sont pleins de petits cris.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voici de son regard, voici de son sourire;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Amour, ô doux vainqueur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Fais ton nid dans mon cœur.</span></p> - - - - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<h4><i>CHANSON D'AUJOURD'HUI</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je disais:—Dieu qu'aucun suppliant n'importune,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand vous m'éprouverez dans votre volonté,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Laissez mon libre choix choisir dans la fortune</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">L'un ou l'autre côté;</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entre un riche esclavage et la pauvreté franche</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Laissez-moi choisir, Dieu du cèdre et du roseau;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entre l'or de la cage et le vert de la branche</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Faites juge l'oiseau.—</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Maintenant je suis libre et la nuit me réclame;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">J'ai choisi l'âpre exil; j'habite un bois obscur;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais je vois s'allumer les étoiles de l'âme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Dans mon sinistre azur.</span></p> - - -<p>If this can be surpassed for outward and inward sweetness, the -following poem may perhaps have been equaled for sensible and spiritual -terror in the range of lyric song.</p> - - -<h4><i>EN MARCHANT LA NUIT DANS UN BOIS</i></h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il grêle, il pleut. Neige et brume;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fondrière à chaque pas.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le torrent veut, crie, écume,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le rocher ne veut pas.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le sabbat à notre oreille</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jette ses vagues hourras.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un fagot sur une vieille</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Passe en agitant les bras.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Passants hideux, clartés blanches;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il semble, en ces noirs chemins,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que les hommes ont des branches.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que les arbres ont des mains.</span></p> - - - - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">On entend passer un coche,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le lourd coche de la mort,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il vient, il roule, il approche,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'eau hurle et la bise mord.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le dur cocher, dans la plaine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aux aspects noirs et changeants,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Conduit sa voiture pleine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De toute sorte de gens.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Novembre souffle, la terre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Frémit, la bourrasque fond;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les flèches du sagittaire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sifflent dans le ciel profond.</span></p> - - - - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Cocher, d'où viens-tu? dit l'arbre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Où vas-tu? dit l'eau qui fuit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le cocher est fait de marbre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le coche est fait de nuit.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il emporte beauté, gloire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Joie, amour, plaisirs bruyants;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La voiture est toute noire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les chevaux sont effrayants.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'arbre en frissonnant s'incline,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'eau sent les joncs se dresser.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le buisson sur la colline</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Grimpe pour le voir passer.</span></p> - - - - -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le brin d'herbe sur la roche,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le nuage dans le ciel,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Regarde marcher ce coche,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et croit voir rouler Babel.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur sa morne silhouette,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Battant de l'aile à grands cris,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Volent l'orage, chouette,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'ombre, chauve-souris.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vent glacé, tu nous secoues!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le char roule, et l'œil tremblant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À travers ses grandes roues,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voit un crépuscule blanc.</span></p> - - - - -<h4>V</h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">La nuit, sinistre merveille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Répand son effroi sacré;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toute la forêt s'éveille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme un dormeur effaré.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Après les oiseaux, les âmes!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Volez sous les cieux blafards.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'étang, miroir, rit aux femmes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui sortent des nénuphars.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'air sanglote, et le vent râle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et, sous l'obscur firmament,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La nuit sombre et la mort pâle</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Se regardent fixement.</span></p> - - -<p>But the twenty-fifth poem in this book of lyrics has assuredly never -been excelled since first the impulse of articulate song awoke in the -first recorded or unrecorded poet.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Proscrit, regarde les roses;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mai joyeux, de l'aube en pleurs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les reçoit toutes écloses;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Proscrit, regarde les fleurs.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">—Je pense</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aux roses que je semai.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le mois de mai sans la France,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce n'est pas le mois de mai.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Proscrit, regarde les tombes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mai, qui rit aux cieux si beaux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sous les baisers des colombes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fait palpiter les tombeaux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">—Je pense</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aux yeux chers que je fermai.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le mois de mai sans la France.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce n'est pas le mois de mai.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Proscrit, regarde les branches,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les branches où sont les nids;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mai les remplit d'ailes blanches</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et de soupirs infinis.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">—Je pense</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aux nids charmants où j'aimai.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le mois de mai sans la France,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce n'est pas le mois de mai.</span></p> - - -<p><i>Mai</i> 1854.</p> - - -<p>In October of the same year—the second year of his long -exile—a loftier note of no less heavenly melody was sounded by the -lyric poet who alone of all his nation has taken his place beside -Coleridge and Shelley. The word "passant," as addressed by the soul to -the body, is perhaps the very finest expression of his fervent faith in -immortality to be found in all the work of Victor Hugo.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il est un peu tard pour faire la belle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Reine marguerite; aux champs défleuris</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Bientôt vont souffler le givre et la grêle.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Passant, l'hiver vient, et je lui souris.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il est un peu tard pour faire la belle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Étoile du soir; les rayons taris</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sont tous retournés à l'aube éternelle.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Passant, la nuit vient, et je lui souris.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il est un peu tard pour faire la belle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mon âme; joyeuse en mes noirs débris,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu m'éblouis, fière et rouvrant ton aile.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Passant, la mort vient, et je lui souris.</span></p> - - -<p>No date is affixed to the divine song of yearning after home and the -graves which make holier for every man old enough to have been a mourner -the native land which holds them. The play on sound which distinguishes -the last repetition of the burden is the crowning evidence that the -subtlest effect of pathos and the most austere effect of sublimity may -be conveyed through a trick of language familiar in their highest and -most serious moods to Æschylus and to Shakespeare.</p> - - - - -<h4><i>EXIL</i></h4> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si je pouvais voir, ô patrie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tes amandiers et tes lilas,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et fouler ton herbe fleurie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Hélas!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si je pouvais,—mais, ô mon père,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô ma mère, je ne peux pas,—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Prendre pour chevet votre pierre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Hélas!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans le froid cercueil qui vous gêne,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si je pouvais vous parler bas,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mon frère Abel, mon frère Eugène,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Hélas!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si je pouvais, ô ma colombe.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et toi, mère, qui t'envolas,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">M'agenouiller sur votre tombe,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Hélas!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Oh! vers l'étoile solitaire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme je lèverais les bras!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme je baiserais la terre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Hélas!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Loin de vous, ô morts que je pleure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des flots noirs j'écoute le glas;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je voudrais fuir, mais je demeure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Hélas!</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourtant le sort, caché dans l'ombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Se trompe si, comptant mes pas,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il croit que le vieux marcheur sombre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Est las.</span></p> - - -<p>The epic book is the most tragic and terrible of all existing poems of -its kind; if indeed we may say that it properly belongs to any kind -existing before its advent. The growing horror of the gradual vision of -history, from Henri the Fourth to his bloody and gloomy son, from Louis -the Thirteenth to the murderer and hangman of the Palatinate and the -Cévennes, from Louis the Fourteenth to the inexpressible pollution of -incarnate ignominy in his grandson, seems to heave and swell as a sea -towards the coming thunder which was to break above the severed head of -their miserable son.</p> - -<p>And next year came <i>Torquemada</i>: one of the greatest -masterpieces of the master poet of our century. The construction of this -tragedy is absolutely original and unique: free and full of change as -the wildest and loosest and roughest of dramatic structures ever flung -together, and left to crumble or cohere at the pleasure of accident or -of luck, by the rudest of primæval playwrights: but perfect in -harmonious unity of spirit, in symmetry or symphony of part with part, -as the most finished and flawless creation of Sophocles or of Phidias. -Between some of the characters in this play and some of those in -previous plays of Hugo's there is a certain resemblance as of kinship, -but no touch or shadow of mere repetition or reproduction from types -which had been used before: Ferdinand the Catholic has something in his -lineaments of Louis the Just, and Gucho of L'Angely in <i>Marion de -Lorme</i>: the Marquis of Fuentel has a touch of Gunich in <i>Les deux -trouvailles de Gallus</i>, redeemed by a better touch of human -tenderness for his recovered grandson. The young lovers are two of the -loveliest figures, Torquemada is one of the sublimest, in all the -illimitable world of dramatic imagination. The intensity of interest, -anxiety, and terror, which grows by such rapid and subtle stages of -development up to the thunder-stroke of royal decision at the close of -the first act, is exchanged in the second for an even deeper and higher -kind of emotion. The confrontation of the hermit with the inquisitor, -magnificent enough already in its singleness of effect, is at once -transfigured and completed by the apparition of the tremendous figure -whose very name is tragedy, whose very shadow sufficed for the central -and the crowning terror which darkened the stage of <i>Lucrèce -Borgia.</i></p> - - -<p class="actor">LE CHASSEUR</p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;"> -Le hasard a pétri la cendre avec l'instant;<br /> -Cet amalgame est l'homme. Or, moi-même n'étant<br /> -Comme vous que matière, ah! je serais stupide<br /> -D'être hésitant et lourd quand la joie est rapide,<br /> -De ne point mordre en hâte au plaisir dans la nuit,<br /> -Et de ne pas goûter à tout, puisque tout fuit!<br /> -Avant tout, être heureux. Je prends à mon service<br /> -Ce qu'on appelle crime et ce qu'on nomme vice.<br /> -L'inceste, préjugé. Le meurtre, expédient.<br /> -J'honore le scrupule en le congédiant.<br /> -Est-ce que vous croyez que, si ma fille est belle,<br /> -Je me gênerai, moi, pour être amoureux d'elle!<br /> -Ah ça, mais je serais un imbécile. Il faut<br /> -Que j'existe. Allez donc demander au gerfaut,<br /> -À l'aigle, à l'épervier, si cette chair qu'il broie<br /> -Est permise, et s'il sait de quel nid sort si proie.<br /> -Parce que vous portez un habit noir ou blanc,<br /> -Vous vous croyez forcé d'être inepte et tremblant,<br /> -Et vous baissez les yeux devant cette offre immense<br /> -Du bonheur, que vous fait l'univers en démence.<br /> -Ayons donc de l'esprit. Profitons du temps. Rien<br /> -Etant le résultat de la mort, vivons bien!<br /> -La salle de bal croule et devient catacombe.<br /> -L'âme du sage arrive en dansant dans la tombe.<br /> -Servez-moi mon festin. S'il exige aujourd'hui<br /> -Un assaisonnement de poison pour autrui,<br /> -Soit. Qu'importe la mort des autres! J'ai la vie.<br /> -Je suis une faim, vaste, ardente, inassouvie.<br /> -Mort, je veux t'oublier; Dieu, je veux t'ignorer.<br /> -Oui, le monde est pour moi le fruit à dévorer.<br /> -Vivant, je suis en hâte heureux; mort, je m'échappe!</p> - -<p class="actor">FRANÇOIS DE PAULE, à <i>Torquemada.</i></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Qu'est-ce que ce bandit?</p> - -<p class="actor">TORQUEMADA</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 50%;">Mon père, c'est le pape.</p> - - -<p>The third act revives again the more immediate and personal interest of -the drama. Terror and pity never rose higher, never found utterance more -sublime and piercing, in any work of any poet in the world, than here in -the scene of the supplication of the Jews, and the ensuing scene of the -triumph of Torquemada.</p> - -<p>The Jews enter; men, women, and children all covered with ashes and -clothed in rags, barefoot, with ropes round their necks, some mutilated -and made infirm by torture, dragging themselves on crutches or on -stumps; others, whose eyes have been put out, are led by children. And -their spokesman pleads thus with the king and the queen of the kingdoms -from whence they are to be driven by Christian jurisdiction.</p> - - -<p class="actor">MOÏSE-BEN-HABIB, <i>grand rabbin, à genoux.</i></p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;"> -Altesse de Castille, altesse d'Aragon,<br /> -Roi, reine! ô notre maître, et vous, notre maîtresse,<br /> -Nous, vos tremblants sujets, nous sommes en détresse,<br /> -Et, pieds nus, corde au cou, nous prions Dieu d'abord,<br /> -Et vous ensuite, étant dans l'ombre de la mort,<br /> -Ayant plusieurs de nous qu'on va livrer aux flammes,<br /> -Et tout le reste étant chassé, vieillards et femmes,<br /> -Et, sous l'œil qui voit tout du fond du firmament,<br /> -Rois, nous vous apportons notre gémissement.<br /> -Altesses, vos décrets sur nous se précipitent,<br /> -Nous pleurons, et les os de nos pères palpitent;<br /> -Le sépulcre pensif tremble à cause de vous.<br /> -Ayez pitié. Nos cœurs sont fidèles et doux;<br /> -Nous vivons enfermés dans nos maisons étroites,<br /> -Humbles, seuls; nos lois sont très simples et très droites,<br /> -Tellement qu'un enfant les mettrait en écrit<br /> -Jamais le juif ne chante et jamais il ne rit.<br /> -Nous payons le tribut, n'importe quelles sommes.<br /> -On nous remue à terre avec le pied; nous sommes<br /> -Comme le vêtement d'un homme assassiné,<br /> -Gloire à Dieu! Mais faut-il qu'avec le nouveau-né,<br /> -Avec l'enfant qu'on tette, avec l'enfant qu'on sèvre,<br /> -Nu, poussant devant lui son chien, son bœuf, sa chèvre,<br /> -Israël fuie et coure épars dans tous les sens!<br /> -Qu'on ne soit plus un peuple et qu'on soit des passants!<br /> -Rois, ne nous faites pas chasser à coups des piques,<br /> -Et Dieu vous ouvrira des portes magnifiques.<br /> -Ayez pitié de nous. Nous sommes accablés.<br /> -Nous ne verrons donc plus nos arbres et nos blés!<br /> -Les mères n'auront plus de lait dans leurs mamelles!<br /> -Les bêtes dans les bois sont avec leurs femelles,<br /> -Les nids dorment heureux sous les branches blottis,<br /> -On laisse en paix la biche allaiter ses petits,<br /> -Permettez-nous de vivre aussi, nous, dans nos caves,<br /> -Sous nos pauvres toits, presque au bagne et presque<br /> -esclaves,<br /> -Mais auprès des cercueils de nos pères! daignez<br /> -Nous souffrir sous vos pieds de nos larmes baignés!<br /> -Oh! la dispersion sur les routes lointaines,<br /> -Quel deuil! Permettez-nous de boire à nos fontaines<br /> -Et de vivre en nos champs, et vous prospérerez.<br /> -Hélas! nous nous tordons les bras, désespérés!<br /> -Epargnez-nous l'exil, ô rois, et l'agonie<br /> -De la solitude âpre, éternelle, infinie!<br /> -Laissez-nous la patrie et laissez-nous le ciel!<br /> -Le pain sur qui l'on pleure en mangeant est du fiel.<br /> -Ne soyez pas le vent si nous sommes la cendre.<br /> -Voici notre rançon, hélas! daignez la prendre.<br /> -Ô rois, protégez-nous. Voyez nos désespoirs.<br /> -Soyez sur nous, mais non comme des anges noirs;<br /> -Soyez des anges bons et doux, car l'aile sombre<br /> -Et l'aile blanche, ô rois, ne font pas la même ombre.<br /> -Révoquez votre arrêt. Rois, nous vous supplions<br /> -Par vos aïeux sacrés, grands comme les lions,<br /> -Par les tombeaux des rois, parles tombeaux des reines,<br /> -Profonds et pénétrés de lumières sereines,<br /> -Et nous mettons nos cœurs, ô maîtres des humains,<br /> -Nos prières, nos deuils dans les petites mains<br /> -De votre infante Jeanne, innocente, et pareille<br /> -À la fraise des bois où se pose l'abeille.<br /> -Roi, reine, ayez pitié!</p> - - -<p>After the sublime and inexpressible pathos of this appeal from age and -innocence against the most execrable of all religions that ever infected -earth and verified hell, it would have been impossible for any poet but -one to find expression for the passion of unselfish faith in that -infernal creed which should not merely horrify and disgust us. But when -Hugo brings before us the figure of the grand inquisitor in -contemplation of the supreme act of faith accomplished in defiance of -king and queen to the greater glory of God, for the ultimate redemption -of souls else condemned to everlasting torment, the rapture of the -terrible redeemer, whose faith is in salvation by fire, is rendered into -words of such magical and magnificent inspiration that the conscience of -our fancy is well nigh conquered and convinced and converted for the -moment as we read.</p> - - -<p class="actor">TORQUEMADA</p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 45%;">Ô fête, ô gloire, ô joie!</p> -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">La clémence terrible et superbe flamboie!<br /> -Délivrance à jamais! Damnés, soyez absous!<br /> -Le bûcher sur la terre éteint l'enfer dessous.<br /> -Sois béni, toi par qui l'âme au bonheur remonte,<br /> -Bûcher, gloire du feu dont l'enfer est la honte,<br /> -Issue aboutissant au radieux chemin,<br /> -Porte du paradis rouverte au genre humain,<br /> -Miséricorde ardente aux caresses sans nombre,<br /> -Mystérieux rachat des esclaves de l'ombre,<br /> -Auto-da-fé! Pardon, bonté, lumière, feu,<br /> -Vie! éblouissement de la face de Dieu!<br /> -Oh! quel départ splendide et que d'âmes sauvées!<br /> -Juifs, mécréants, pécheurs, ô mes chères couvées,<br /> -Un court tourment vous paie un bonheur infini;<br /> -L'homme n'est plus maudit, l'homme n'est plus banni;<br /> -Le salut s'ouvre au fond des cieux. L'amour s'éveille,<br /> -Et voici son triomphe, et voici sa merveille,<br /> -Quelle extase! entrer droit au ciel! ne pas languir!</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 40%;"><i>Cris dans le brasier.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Entendez-vous Satan hurler de les voir fuir?<br /> -Que l'éternel forçat pleure en l'éternel bouge!<br /> -J'ai poussé de mes poings l'énorme porte rouge.<br /> -Oh! comme il a grincé lorsque je refermais<br /> -Sur lui les deux battants hideux, Toujours, Jamais!<br /> -Sinistre, il est resté, derrière le mur sombre.</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 40%;"><i>Il regarde le ciel.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Oh! j'ai pansé la plaie effrayante de l'ombre.<br /> -Le paradis souffrait; le ciel avait au flanc.<br /> -Cet ulcère, l'enfer brûlant, l'enfer sanglant;<br /> -J'ai posé sur l'enfer la flamme bienfaitrice,<br /> -Et j'en vois dans l'immense azur la cicatrice.<br /> -C'était ton coup de lance au côté, Jésus-Christ!<br /> -Hosanna! la blessure éternelle guérit.<br /> -Plus d'enfer. C'est fini. Les douleurs sont taries.</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 40%;"><i>Il regarde le quemadero.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Rubis de la fournaise! ô braises! pierreries!<br /> -Flambez, tisons! brûlez, charbons! feu souverain,<br /> -Pétille! luis, bûcher! prodigieux écrin<br /> -D'étincelles qui vont devenir des étoiles!<br /> -Les âmes, hors des corps comme hors de leurs voiles,<br /> -S'en vont, et le bonheur sort du bain de tourments!<br /> -Splendeur! magnificence ardente! flamboiements!<br /> -Satan, mon ennemi, qu'en dis-tu?</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 50%;"><i>En extase.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 55%;">Feu! lavage</p> -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">De toutes les noirceurs par la flamme sauvage!<br /> -Transfiguration suprême! acte de foi!<br /> -Nous sommes deux sous l'œil de Dieu, Satan et moi.<br /> -Deux porte-fourches, lui, moi. Deux maîtres des<br /> -flammes.<br /> -Lui perdant les humains, moi secourant les âmes;<br /> -Tous deux bourreaux, faisant par le même moyen<br /> -Lui l'enfer, moi le ciel, lui le mal, moi le bien;<br /> -Il est dans le cloaque et je suis dans le temple,<br /> -Et le noir tremblement de l'ombre nous contemple.</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 30%;"><i>Il se retourne vers les suppliciés.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Ah! sans moi, vous étiez perdus, mes bien-aimés!<br /> -La piscine de feu vous épure enflammés.<br /> -Ah! vous me maudissez pour un instant qui passe,<br /> -Enfants! mais tout à l'heure, oui, vous me rendrez<br /> -grâce<br /> -Quand vous verrez à quoi vous avez échappé;<br /> -Car, ainsi que Michel-Archange, j'ai frappé;<br /> -Car les blancs séraphins, penchés au puits de souffre,<br /> -Raillent le monstrueux avortement du gouffre;<br /> -Car votre hurlement de haine arrive au jour,<br /> -Bégaie, et, stupéfait, s'achève enchant d'amour!<br /> -Oh! comme j'ai souffert de vous voir dans les chambres<br /> -De torture, criant, pleurant, tordant vos membres,<br /> -Maniés par l'étau d'airain, par le fer chaud!<br /> -Vous voilà délivrés, partez, fuyez là-haut!<br /> -Entrez au paradis!</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 30%;"><i>Il se penche et semble regarder sous terre.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 45%;">Non, tu n'auras plus d'âmes!</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 30%;"><i>Il se redresse.</i></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;">Dieu nous donne l'appui que nous lui demandâmes,<br /> -Et l'homme est hors du gouffre. Allez, allez, allez!<br /> -À travers l'ombre ardente et les grands feux ailés,<br /> -L'évanouissement de la fumée emporte<br /> -Là-haut l'esprit vivant sauvé de la chair morte!<br /> -Tout le vieux crime humain de l'homme est arraché;<br /> -L'un avait son erreur, l'autre avait son péché,<br /> -Faute ou vice, chaque âme avait son monstre en elle<br /> -Qui rongeait sa lumière et qui mordait son aile;<br /> -L'ange expirait en proie au démon. Maintenant<br /> -Tout brûle, et le partage auguste et rayonnant<br /> -Se fait devant Jésus dans la clarté des tombes.<br /> -Dragons, tombez en cendre; envolez-vous, colombes!<br /> -Vous que l'enfer tenait, liberté! liberté!<br /> -Montez de l'ombre au jour. Changez d'éternité!</p> - - -<p>The last act would indeed be too cruel for endurance if it were not too -beautiful for blame. But not the inquisition itself was more inevitably -inexorable than is the spiritual law, the unalterable and immitigable -instinct, of tragic poetry at its highest. Dante could not redeem -Francesca, Shakespeare could not rescue Cordelia. To none of us, we must -think, can the children of a great poet's divine imagination seem dearer -or more deserving of mercy than they seemed to their creator: but when -poetry demands their immolation, they must die, that they may live for -ever.</p> - -<p>Once more, but now for the last time, the world was to receive yet -another gift from the living hand of the greatest man it had seen since -Shakespeare. Towards the close of his eighty-second year he bestowed on -us the crowning volume of his crowning work, the imperishable and -inappreciable <i>Légende des Siècles.</i> And at the age of eighty-three -years, two months, and twenty-six days, he entered into rest for ever, -and into glory which can perish only with the memory of all things -memorable among all races and nations of mankind.</p> - -<p>I have spoken here—and no man can know so well or feel so -deeply as myself with what imperfection of utterance and inadequacy of -insight I have spoken—of Victor Hugo as the whole world knew and -as all honorable or intelligent men regarded and revered him. But there -are those among his friends and mine who would have a right to wonder if -no word were here to be said of the unsolicited and unmerited kindness -which first vouchsafed to take notice of a crude and puerile attempt to -render some tribute of thanks for the gifts of his genius just -twenty-three years ago; of the kindness which was always but too ready -to recognize and requite a gratitude which had no claim on him but that -of a very perfect loyalty; of the kindness which many years afterwards -received me as a guest under his roof with the welcome of a father to a -son. Such matters, if touched on at all, unquestionably should not be -dwelt on in public: but to give them no word whatever of acknowledgment -at parting would show rather unthankfulness than reserve in one who was -honored so far above all possible hope or merit by the paternal goodness -of Victor Hugo.</p> - - - - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In the winter of the year which in spring had seen <i>Les -Rayons et les Ombres</i> come forth to kindle and refresh the hearts of -readers, Victor Hugo published au ode in the same key as those <i>To the -Column</i> and <i>To the Arch of Triumph</i>, on the return and reinterment of -the dead Napoleon. Full of noble feeling and sonorous eloquence, the -place of this poem in any collection of its author's works is distinctly -and unmistakably marked out by every quality it has and by every quality -it wants. In style and in sentiment, in opinion and in rhythm, it is one -with the national and political poems which had already been published -by the author since the date of his <i>Orientales</i>: in other words, it is -in every possible point utterly and absolutely unlike the poems long -afterwards to be written by the author in exile. Its old place, -therefore, in all former editions, at the end of the volume containing -the poems previously published in the same year, is obviously the only -right one, and rationally the only one possible. By what inexplicable -and inconceivable caprice it has been promoted to a place in the -so-called <i>édition définitive</i>, on the mighty roll of the <i>Légende -des Siècles</i>, at the head of the fourth volume of that crowning work of -modern times, I am hopelessly and helplessly at a loss to conjecture. -But, at all risk of impeachment on a charge of unbecoming presumption, I -must and do here enter my most earnest and strenuous protest against the -claim of an edition to be in any sense final and unalterable, which -rejects from among the <i>Châtiments</i> the poem on the death of -Saint-Arnaud and admits into the <i>Légende des Siècles</i> the poem on the -reinterment of Napoleon.</p></div> - - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_1" id="Footnote_2_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_1"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>This poem on St-Arnaud is dated from Jersey, and must -therefore have been written before the second of November 1855—a date -of disgrace for Jersey, if not indeed for England. It appears in the -various later editions of the <i>Châtiments</i>, but has disappeared from -the so-called "édition définitive." All readers have aright to ask -why—and a right to be answered when they ask.</p></div> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<h4><a id="LA_LEGENDE_DES_SIECLES"><i>LA LÉGENDE DES SIÈCLES</i></a></h4> - - -<h4>1883</h4> - - -<p>"Chacun a sa manière. Quant à moi, qui parle ici, j'admire tout, -comme une brute.—N'espérez donc aucune critique.—Je ne -chicane point ces grands bienfaiteurs-là. Ce que vous qualifiez -défaut, je le qualifie accent. Je reçois et je remercie.—Ayant -eu l'honneur d'être appelé "niais" par plusieurs écrivains et -critiques distingués, je cherche à justifier l'épithète."</p> - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<p>The greatest work of the century is now at length complete. It is -upwards of twenty-four years since the first part of it was sent home to -France from Guernsey. Eighteen years later we received a second -installment of the yet unexhausted treasure. And here, at the age of -eighty-one, the sovereign poet of the world has placed the copings-tone -on the stateliest of spiritual buildings that ever in modern times has -been reared for the wonder and the worship of mankind.</p> - -<p>Those only to whom nothing seems difficult because nothing to them -seems greater than themselves could find it other than an arduous -undertaking to utter some word of not unworthy welcome and thanksgiving -when their life is suddenly enriched and brightened by such an addition -to its most precious things as the dawn of a whole new world of -song—and a world that may hold its own in heaven beside the suns -created or evoked by the fiat of Shakespeare or of Dante. To review the -<i>Divine Comedy</i>, to dispose of <i>Hamlet</i> in the course of a -leading article, to despatch in a few sentences the question of -<i>Paradise Lost</i> and its claim to immortality, might seem easy to -judges who should feel themselves on a level with the givers of these -gifts; for others it could be none the less difficult to discharge this -office because the gift was but newly given. One minor phase of the -difficulty which presents itself is this: the temporary judge, -self-elected to pass sentence on any supreme achievement of human power, -must choose on which horn of an inevitable dilemma he may prefer to run -the risk of impalement. If, recognizing in this new master-work an equal -share of the highest qualities possible to man with that possessed and -manifested by any previous writer of now unquestioned supremacy, he -takes upon himself to admit, simply and honestly, that he does recognize -this, and cannot choose but recognize it, he must know that his judgment -will be received with no more tolerance or respect, with no less -irritation and derision, than would have been, in Dante's time, the -judgment of a critic who should have ventured to rank Dante above -Virgil, in Shakespeare's time of a critic who should have dared to set -Shakespeare beside Homer. If, on the other hand, he should abstain with -all due discretion from any utterance or any intimation of a truth so -ridiculous and untimely, he runs the sure and certain risk of leaving -behind him a name to be ranked, by all who remember it at all, with -those which no man mentions without a smile of compassion or of scorn, -according to the quality of error discernible in the critic's -misjudgment: innocent and incurable as the confidence of a Johnson or a -Jeffrey, venomous and malignant as the rancor of Sainte-Beuve or -Gifford. Of these two dangers I choose the former; and venture to admit, -in each case with equal diffidence, that I do upon the whole prefer -Dante to any Cino or Cecco, Shakespeare to all the Greenes and Peeles -and Lillys, Victor Hugo to all or any, of their respective times. The -reader who has no tolerance for paradox or presumption has therefore -fair warning to read no further.</p> - -<p>Auguste Vacquerie, of all poets and all men living the most worthy to -praise the greatest poet of his century, has put on record long ago, -with all the vivid ardor of his admirable style, an experience of which -I now am but too forcibly reminded. He was once invited by Victor Hugo -to choose among the manuscripts of the master's unpublished work, from -the drawers containing respectively some lyric or dramatic or narrative -masterpiece, of which among the three kinds he would prefer to have a -sample first. Unable to select, he touched a drawer at random, which -contained the opening chapters of a yet unfinished story—<i>Les -Misérables.</i> If it is no less hard to choose where to begin in a -notice of the <i>Légende des Siècles</i>—to decide what star in -all this thronged and living heaven should first attract the direction -of our critical telescope—it is on the other hand no less certain -that on no side can the telescope be misdirected. From the miraculous -music of a legendary dawn, when the first woman felt first within her -the movement of her first-born child, to the crowning vision of ultimate -justice made visible and material in the likeness of the trumpet of -doom, no radiance or shadow of days or nights intervening, no change of -light or cadence of music in all the tragic pageant of the centuries, -finds less perfect expression and response, less absolute refraction or -reflection, than all that come and go before or after it. History and -legend, fact and vision, are fused and harmonized by the mastering charm -of moral unity in imaginative truth. There is no more possibility of -discord or default in this transcendent work of human power than in the -working of those powers of nature which transcend humanity. In the first -verses of the overture we hear such depth and height of music, see such -breadth and splendor of beauty, that we know at once these cannot but -continue to the end; and from the end, when we arrive at the goal of the -last line, we look back and perceive that it has been so. Were this -overture but a thought less perfect, a shade less triumphant, we might -doubt if what was to follow it could be as perfect and triumphant as -itself. We might begin—and indeed, as it is, there are naturally -those who have begun—to debate with ourselves or to dispute with -the poet as to the details of his scheme, the selection of his types, -the propriety of his method, the accuracy of his title. There are those -who would seem to infer from the choice of this title that the book is, -in the most vulgar sense, of a purely legendary cast; who object, for -example, that a record of unselfish and devoted charity shown by the -poor to the poor is, happily, no "legend." Writers in whom such -self-exposure of naked and unashamed ignorance with respect to the -rudiments of language is hardly to be feared have apparently been -induced or inclined to expect some elaborate and orderly review of -history, some versified chronicle of celebrated events and significant -epochs, such as might perhaps be of subsidiary or supplementary service -in the training of candidates for a competitive examination; and on -finding something very different from this have tossed head and shrugged -shoulder in somewhat mistimed impatience, as at some deception or -misnomer on the great author's part which they, as men of culture and -understanding, had a reasonable right to resent. The book, they affirm, -is a mere agglomeration of unconnected episodes, irrelevant and -incoherent, disproportionate and fortuitous, chosen at random by -accident or caprice; it is not one great palace of poetry, but a series -or congeries rather of magnificently accumulated fragments. It may be -urged in answer to this impeachment that the unity of the book is not -logical but spiritual; its diversity is not accidental or chaotic, it is -the result and expression of a spontaneous and perfect harmony, as clear -and as profound as that of the other greatest works achieved by man. To -demonstrate this by rule and line of syllogism is no present ambition of -mine. A humbler, a safer, and perhaps a more profitable task would be to -attempt some flying summary, some glancing revision of the three great -parts which compose this mightiest poem of our age; or rather, if this -also should seem too presumptuous an aspiration, to indicate here and -there the points to which memory and imagination are most fain to revert -most frequently and brood upon them longest, with a deeper delight, a -more rapturous reverence, than waits upon the rest. Not that I would -venture to assert or to insinuate that there is in any poem of the cycle -any note whatever of inferiority or disparity; but having neither space -nor time nor power to speak, however inadequately, of each among the -hundred and thirty-eight poems which compose the now perfect book, I am -compelled to choose, not quite at random, an example here and there of -its highest and most typical qualities. In the first book, for instance, -of the first series, the divine poem on Ruth and Boaz may properly be -taken as representative of that almost indefinable quality which -hitherto has seemed more especially the gift of Dante: a fusion, so to -speak, of sublimity with sweetness, the exaltation of loveliness into -splendor and simplicity into mystery, such as glorifies the close of his -<i>Purgatory</i> and the opening of his <i>Paradise.</i> Again, the -majestic verses which bring Mahomet before us at his end strike a deeper -impression into the memory than is left by the previous poem on the -raising of Lazarus; and when we pass into the cycle of heroic or -chivalrous legend we find those poems the loftiest and the loveliest -which have in them most of that prophetic and passionate morality which -makes the greatest poet, in this as in some other ages, as much a seer -as a singer, an evangelist no less than an artist. Hugo, for all his -dramatic and narrative mastery of effect, will always probably remind -men rather of such poets as Dante or Isaiah than of such poets as -Sophocles or Shakespeare. We cannot of course imagine the Florentine or -the Hebrew endowed with his infinite variety of sympathies, of -interests, and of powers; but as little can we imagine in the Athenian -such height and depth of passion, in the Englishman such unquenchable -and sleepless fire of moral and prophetic faith. And hardly in any one -of these, though Shakespeare may perhaps be excepted, can we recognize -the same buoyant and childlike exultation in such things as are the -delight of a high-hearted child—in free glory of adventure and -ideal daring, in the triumph and rapture of reinless imagination, which -gives now and then some excess of godlike empire and superhuman kingship -to their hands whom his hands have created, to the lips whose life is -breathed into them from his own. By the Homeric stature of the soul he -measures the heroic capacity of the sword. And indeed it is hardly in -our century that men who do not wish to provoke laughter should venture -to mock at a poet who puts a horde to flight before a hero, or strikes -down strongholds by the lightning of a single will. No right and no -power to disbelieve in the arm of Hercules or the voice of Jesus can -rationally remain with those who have seen Garibaldi take a kingdom into -the hollow of his hand, and not one man but a whole nation arise from -the dead at the sound of the word of Mazzini.</p> - -<p>Two out of the five heroic poems which compose the fourth book of the -first series will always remain types of what the genius of Hugo could -achieve in two opposite lines. All the music of morning, all the -sunshine of romance, all the sweetness and charm of chivalry, will come -back upon all readers at the gracious and radiant name of -<i>Aymerillot</i>; all the blackness of darkness rank with fumes of -blood and loud with cries of torment, which covers in so many quarters -the history, not romantic but actual, of the ages called ages of faith, -will close in upon the memory which reverts to the direful <i>Day of -Kings.</i> The sound of the final note struck in the latter poem remains -in the mind as the echo of a crowning peal of thunder in the ear of one -entranced and spell-stricken by the magnetism of storm. The Pyrenees -belong to Hugo as the western coasts of Italy, Neapolitan or Tuscan, -belong to Shelley; they can never again be done into words and -translated into music as for once they have been by these. It can hardly -be said that he who knows the Pyrenees has read Victor Hugo; but -certainly it may be said that he who knows Victor Hugo has seen the -Pyrenees. From the author's prefatory avowal that his book contains few -bright or smiling pictures, a reader would never have inferred that so -many of its pages are fragrant with all the breath and radiant with all -the bloom of April or May among the pine-woods and their mountain lawns, -ablaze with ardent blossom and astir with triumphant song. Tragedy may -be hard at hand, with all the human train of sorrows and passions and -sins; but the glory of beauty, the loveliness of love, the exultation of -noble duty and lofty labor in a stress of arduous joy, these are the -influences that pervade the world and permeate the air of the poems -which deal with the Christian cycle of heroic legend, whose crowning -image is the ideal figure of the Cid. To this highest and purest type of -mediæval romance or history the fancy of the great poet whose childhood -was cradled in Spain turns and returns throughout the course of his -threefold masterpiece with an almost national pride and passion of -sublime delight. Once in the first part and once in the third his chosen -hero is set before us in heroic verse, doing menial service for his -father in his father's house, and again, in a king's palace, doing for -humanity the sovereign service of tyrannicide. But in the second part it -seems as though the poet could hardly, with his fullest effusion of -lyric strength and sweetness, do enough to satisfy his loving -imagination of the perfect knight, most faithful and most gentle and -most terrible, whom he likens even to the very Pic du Midi in its -majesty of solitude. Each fresh blast of verse has in it the ring of a -golden clarion which proclaims in one breath the honor of the loyal -soldier and the dishonor of the disloyal king. There can hardly be in -any language a more precious and wonderful study of technical art in -verse of the highest kind of simplicity than this <i>Romancero du -Cid</i>, with its jet of luminous and burning song sustained without -lapse or break through sixteen "fyttes" of plain brief ballad metre. It -is hard to say whether the one only master of all forms and kinds of -poetry that ever left to all time the proof of his supremacy in all has -shown most clearly by his use of its highest or his use of its simplest -forms the innate and absolute equality of the French language as an -instrument for poetry with the Greek of Æschylus and of Sappho, the -English of Milton and of Shelley.</p> - -<p>But among all Hugo's romantic and tragic poems of mediæval history -or legend the two greatest are in my mind <i>Eviradnus</i> and -<i>Ratbert.</i> I cannot think it would be rash to assert that the -loveliest love-song in the world, the purest and keenest rapture of -lyric fancy, the sweetest and clearest note of dancing or dreaming -music, is that which rings forever in the ear which has once caught the -matchless echo of such lines as these that must once more be quoted, as -though all the world of readers had not long since known them by -heart:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Viens, sois tendre, je suis ivre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô les verts taillis mouillés!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ton souffle te fera suivre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des papillons réveillés.</span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 15%;">* * * * * *</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Allons-nous-en par l'Autriche!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nous aurons l'aube à nos fronts;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je serai grand, et toi riche,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisque nous nous aimerons.</span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 15%;">* * * * * *</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tu seras dame, et moi comte;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Viens, mon cœur s'épanouit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Viens, nous conterons ce conte</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aux étoiles de la nuit.</span></p> - - -<p>The poet would be as sure of a heavenly immortality in the hearts of -men as any lyrist of Greece itself, who should only have written the -fourteen stanzas of the song from which I have ventured to choose these -three. All the sounds and shadows of a moonlit wilderness, all the dews -and murmurs and breaths of midsummer midnight, have become for once -articulate in such music as was never known even to Shakespeare's forest -of Arden. In the heart of a poem so full of tragedy and terror that Hugo -alone could have brightened it with his final touch of sunrise, this -birdlike rapture breaks out as by some divine effect of unforbiden and -blameless magic.</p> - -<p>And yet, it may be said or thought, the master of masters has shown -himself even greater in <i>Ratbert</i> than in <i>Eviradnus.</i> This -most tragic of poems, lit up by no such lyric interlude, stands -unsurpassed even by its author for tenderness, passion, divine -magnificence of righteous wrath, august and pitiless command of terror -and pity. From the kingly and priestly conclave of debaters more dark -than Milton's to the superb admonition of loyal liberty in speech that -can only be silenced by murder, and again from the heavenly and heroic -picture of childhood worshipped by old age to the monstrous banquet of -massacre, when the son of the prostitute has struck his perjured stroke -of state, the poem passes through a change of successive pageants each -fuller of splendor and wonder, of loveliness or of horror, than the -last. But the agony of the hero over the little corpse of the child -murdered with her plaything in her hand—the anguish that utters -itself as in peal upon peal of thunder, broken by sobs of -storm—the full crash of the final imprecation, succeeded again by -such unspeakably sweet and piteous appeal to the little dead lips and -eyes that would have answered yesterday—and at last the one -crowning stroke of crime which calls down an answering stroke of -judgment from the very height of heaven, for the comfort and refreshment -and revival of all hearts—these are things of which no praise can -speak aright. Shakespeare only, were he living, would be worthy to write -on Hugo's Fabrice as Hugo has written on Shakespeare's Lear. History -will forget the name of Bonaparte before humanity forgets the name of -Ratbert.</p> - -<p>But if this be the highest poem of all for passion and pathos and -fire of terrible emotion, the highest in sheer sublimity of imagination -is to my mind <i>Zim-Zizimi.</i> Again and again, in reading it for the -first time, one thinks that surely now the utmost height is reached, the -utmost faculty revealed, that can be possible for a spirit clothed only -with human powers, armed only with human speech. And always one finds -the next step forward to be yet once more a step upward, even to the -very end and limit of them all. Neither in Homer nor in Milton, nor in -the English version of Job or Ezekiel or Isaiah, is the sound of the -roll and the surge of measured music more wonderful than here. Even -after the vision of the tomb of Belus the miraculous impression of -splendor and terror, distinct in married mystery, and diverse in unity -of warning, deepens and swells onward like a sea till we reach the -incomparable psalm in praise of the beauty and the magic of womanhood -made perfect and made awful in Cleopatra, which closes in horror at the -touch of a hand more powerful than Orcagna's. The walls of the Campo -Santo are fainter preachers and feebler pursuivants of the triumph of -death than the pages of the poem which yet again renews its note of -menace after menace and prophecy upon prophecy till the end. There is -probably not one single couplet in all this sweet and bitter roll of -song which could have been written by any poet less than the best or -lower than the greatest of all time.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Passants, quelqu'un veut-il voir Cléopâtre au lit?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Venez; l'alcôve est morne, une brume l'emplit;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cléopâtre est couchée à jamais; cette femme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fut l'éblouissement de l'Asie, et la flamme</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que tout le genre humain avait dans son regard;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand elle disparut, le monde fut hagard;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses dents étaient de perle et sa bouche était d'ambre;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les rois mouraient d'amour en entrant dans sa chambre;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour elle Ephractæus soumit l'Atlas, Sapor</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vint d'Ozymandias saisir les cercle d'or,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mamylos conquit Suse et Tentyris détruite</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et Palmyre, et pour elle Antoine prit la fuite;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entre elle et l'univers qui s'offraient à la fois</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il hésita, lâchant le monde dans son choix.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cléopâtre égalait les Junons éternelles;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Une chaîne sortait de ses vagues prunelles;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô tremblant cœur humain, si jamais tu vibras,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est dans l'étreinte altière et douce de ses bras;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son nom seul enivrait; Strophus n'osait l'écrire;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La terre s'éclairait de son divin sourire,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À force de lumière et d'amour, effrayant;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sons corps semblait mêlé d'azur; en la voyant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vénus, le soir, rentrait jalouse sous la nue;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cléopâtre embaumait l'Egypte; toute nue,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle brûlait les yeux ainsi que le soleil;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les roses enviaient l'ongle de son orteil;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô vivants, allez voir sa tombe souveraine;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fière, elle était déesse et daignait être reine;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'amour prenait pour arc sa lèvre aux coins moqueurs;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa beauté rendait fous les fronts, les sens, les cœurs,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et plus que les lions rugissants était forte;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais bouchez-vous le nez si vous passez la porte.</span></p> - - -<p>At every successive stage of his task, the man who undertakes to -glance over this great cycle of poems must needs incessantly call to -mind the most worn and hackneyed of all quotations from its author's -works—"J'en passe, et des meilleurs." There is here no room, as -surely there should nowhere now be any need, to speak at any length of -the poems in which Roland plays the part of protagonist; first as the -beardless champion of a five days' fight, and again as the deliverer -whose hand could clear the world of a hundred human wolves in one -continuous sword-sweep. There is hardly time allowed us for one poor -word or two of tribute to such a crowning flower of song as <i>La Rose -de L'Infante</i>, with its parable of the broken Armada made manifest in -a wrecked fleet of drifting petals; to the superb and sonorous chant of -the buccaneers, in which all the noise of lawless battle and stormy -laughter passes off into the carol of mere triumphant love and trust; or -even to the whole inner cycle of mystic and primæval legend which seeks -utterance for the human sense of oppression or neglect by jealous or by -joyous gods; for the wild profound revolt of riotous and trampled -nature, the agony and passion and triumph of invincible humanity, the -protest and witness of enduring earth against the passing shades of -heaven, the struggle and the plea of eternal manhood against all -transient forces of ephemeral and tyrannous godhead. Within the orbit of -this epicycle one poem only of the first part, a star of strife and -struggle, can properly be said to revolve; but the light of that planet -has fire enough to animate with its reflex the whole concourse of stormy -stars which illuminate the world-wide wrestle of the giants with the -gods. The torch of revolt borne by the transfigured satyr, eyed like a -god and footed like a beast, kindles the lamp of hopeful and laborious -rebellion which dazzles us in the eye of the Titan who has seen beyond -the world. In the song that struck silence through the triumph of amazed -Olympus there is a sound and air as of the sea or the Book of Job. There -may be something of Persian or Indian mysticism, there is more of -universal and imaginative reason, in the great allegoric myth which sets -forth here how the half-brute child of one poor planet has in him the -seed, the atom, the principle of life everlasting, and dilates in force -of it to the very type and likeness of the eternal universal substance -which is spirit or matter of life; and before the face of his -transfiguration the omnipresent and omnipotent gods who take each their -turn to shine and thunder are all but shadows that pass away. Since the -Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind no ear has heard the burst of -such a song; but this time it is the world that answers out of its -darkness the lords and gods of creed and oracle, who have mastered and -have not made it. And in the cry of its protest and the prophecy of its -advance there is a storm of swelling music which is as the sound of the -strength of rollers after the noise of the rage of breakers.</p> - -<p>It is noticeable that the master of modern poets should have in the -tone and color of his genius more even of the Hebrew than the Greek. In -his love of light and freedom, reason and justice, he is not of -Jerusalem, but of Athens; but in the bent of his imagination, in the -form and color of his dreams, in the scope and sweep of his wide-winged -spiritual flight, he is nearer akin to the great insurgent prophets of -deliverance and restoration than to any poet of Athens except only their -kinsman Æschylus. It is almost wholly of the Persian war, the pass of -Thermopylae, the strait of Euripus, that he sings when he sings of -Hellas. All his might of hand, all his cunning of color, all his -measureless resources of sound and form and symbol, are put forth in the -catalogue of nations and warriors subject to Xerxes. There is nothing in -poetry so vast and tremendous of its kind as this pageant of immense and -monstrous invasion. But indeed the choice of gigantic themes, the -predominance of colossal effects, the prevalence of superhuman visions -over the types and figures of human history or legend, may be regarded -as a distinctive point of difference between the second and the first -series. A typical example of the second is the poem which has added an -eighth wonder built by music to the seven wonders of the world, which it -celebrates in verse more surely wrought for immortality than they. -Another is the song of the worm which takes up in answer to their chant -of life and light and pride of place, and prolongs through measure after -measure of rolling and reverberating verse, the note of a funereal and -universal triumph, the protest and the proclamation of death. Another, -attuned to that mighty music of meditation which rings through so many -of the poems written in exile and loneliness, is the stately prophetic -hymn which bears the superscription of <i>All the Past and all the -Future.</i> This might seem to belong to the sixth book of the -<i>Contemplations</i>, in which the same note of proud and ardent faith -was struck so often with such sovereignty of hand. As much might be said -of the great "abysmal" poem which closes the second series with a -symphony of worlds and spirits. Other groups of poems, in like manner, -bear signs of common or of diverse kinship to former works of a creator -whose spirit has put life into so many of the same likeness, yet with no -more sign of repetition or weary monotony than is traceable in the very -handiwork of nature. The book of idyls is of one inspiration with the -<i>Chansons des Rues et des Bois</i>; in both cases, as in so many of -the poet's earlier lyric volumes, his incomparable fertility of speech -and superb facility of verse leave almost an impression as of work done -by way of exercise, as though he were writing to keep his hand in, or to -show for a wager with incredulous criticism how long he could keep up -the golden ball of metre, carve arabesques of the same pattern, play -variations in the same key. But the <i>Old Man's Idyl</i> which closes -the book belongs by kinship to another work of the poet's, more beloved -and more precious to the inmost heart, if not more eminent for strength -and cunning of hand, than any of these. In "the voice of a child a year -old" there is the same welling and bubbling melody which flows and -laughs and murmurs and glitters through the adorable verses of <i>L'Art -d'être Grand-père</i>, making dim with love and delight the reader's -or the hearer's eyes. At last the language of babies has found its -interpreter; and that, as might have been expected, in the greatest poet -of his age.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'enfant apporte un peu de ce ciel dont il sort;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il ignore, il arrive; homme, tu le recueilles.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Il a le tremblement des herbes et des feuilles.</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La jaserie avant le langage est la fleur</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui précède le fruit, moins beau qu'elle, et meilleur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si c'est être meilleur qu'être plus nécessaire.</span></p> - - -<p>A conclusion which may be doubted when we consider as follows:</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'enfant fait la demande et l'ange la réponse;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le babil puéril dans le ciel bleu s'enfonce,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puis s'en revient, avec les hésitations</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du moineau qui verrait planer les alcyons.</span></p> - - -<p>Can language or can thought be lovelier? if so, the one possible -instance is to be sought in these succeeding verses:</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand l'enfant jase avec l'ombre qui le bénit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La fauvette, attentive, au rebord de son nid</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Se dresse, et ses petits passent, pensifs et frêles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Leurs têtes à travers les plumes de ses ailes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La mère semble dire à sa couvée: Entends,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et tâche de parler aussi bien.</span></p> - - -<p>It seems and is not strange that the lips which distill such honey as -this should be the same so often touched with a coal of fire from that -"altar of Righteousness" where Æschylus was wont to worship. The -twenty-first section of the second series is in the main a renewal or -completion of the work undertaken in the immortal <i>Châtiments.</i> -Even in that awful and incomparable book of judgment such poems as <i>La -Colère du Bronze</i>, and the two following on the traffic of servile -clerical rapacity in matters of death and burial, would have stood high -among the stately legions of satire which fill its living pages with the -sound and the splendor of righteous battle for the right; but the verses -with which Hugo has branded the betrayer of Metz and Strasburg are -hardly to be matched except by those with which, half a century ago, he -branded the betrayer of the Duchess of Berry. Truly may all who read -them cry out with the poet at their close,</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et qui donc maintenant dit qu'il s'est évadé?</span></p> - - -<p>In <i>Le Cimetière d'Eylau</i>, a poem to which we have now in the -third series of the book a most noble and exquisite pendant (<i>Paroles -de mon Oncle</i>), all the Homeric side of a poet born of warlike blood -comes out into proud and bright relief. There is no better fighting in -the Iliad; it has the martial precision and practical fellow-feeling -which animate in his battle-pieces the lagging verse of Walter Scott; -and it has, of course, that omnipresent breath and light and fire of -perfect poetry which a Scott or a Byron is never quite permitted to -attain. Beside or even above these two poems, that other which -commemorates the devotion of a Vendean peasant chief will be set in the -hearts of all readers competent to appreciate either heroic action or -heroic song.</p> - -<p>The love of all high things which finds one form of expression in -warlike sympathy with warriors who can live and die for something higher -than personal credit or success takes another and as natural a shape in -the poems which are inspired by love and worship of nature and her -witness for liberty and purity and truth in the epic evangel of august -and indomitable mountains. The sublimest cry of moral passion ever -inspired by communion in spirit with these is uttered in the great poem -on the Swiss mercenaries of the seventeenth century, which even among -its fellows stands out eminent and radiant as an Alp at sunrise. -Mountain and cataract, the stars and the snows, never yet in any -language found such a singer and interpreter as this. Two or three -verses, two or three words, suffice for him to bring before us, in fresh -and actual presence, the very breath of the hills or the sea, the very -lights and sounds and spaces of clouded or sunlit air. Juvenal is not so -strong in righteousness, nor Pindar so sublime in illustration, as the -poet who borrowed from nature her highest symbols to illustrate the -glory and the duty of righteous wrath and insuppressible insurrection -against wrong-doing, when he wrote <i>Le Régiment du baron Madruce.</i></p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'homme s'est vendu. Soit. A-t-on dans le louage</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Compris le lac, le bois, la ronce, le nuage?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La nature revient, germe, fleurit, dissout,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Féconde, croît, décroît, rit, passe, efface tout.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La Suisse est toujours là, libre. Prend-on au piège</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La précipice, l'ombre et la bise et la neige?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Signe-t-on des marchés dans lesquels il soit dit</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que l'Orteler s'enrôle et devient un bandit?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quel poing cyclopéen, dites, ô roches noires,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pourra briser la Dent de Morde en vos mâchoires?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quel assembleur de bœufs pourra forger un joug</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qui du pic de Glaris aille au piton de Zoug?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est naturellement que les monts sont fidèles</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et purs, ayant la forme âpre des citadelles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ayant reçu de Dieu des créneaux où le soir,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'homme peut, d'embrasure en embrasure, voir</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Étinceler le fer de lance des étoiles.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Est-il une araignée, aigle, qui dans ses toiles</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puisse prendre la trombe et la rafale et toi?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quel chef recrutera le Salève? à quel roi</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le Mythen dira-t-il: "Sire, je vais descendre!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'après avoir dompté l'Athos, quelque Alexandre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sorte de héros monstre aux cornes de taureau,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Aille donc relever sa robe à la Jungfrau!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme la vierge, ayant l'ouragan sur l'épaule,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Crachera l'avalanche à la face du drôle!</span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 15%;">* * * * * *</p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Non, rien n'est mort ici. Tout grandit, et s'en vante.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'Helvétie est sacrée, et la Suisse est vivante;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces monts sont des héros et des religieux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cette nappe de neige aux plis prodigieux</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'où jaillit, lorsqu'en mai la tiède brise ondoie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Toute une floraison folle d'air et de joie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et d'où sortent des lacs et des flots murmurants,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">N'est le linceul de rien, excepté des tyrans.</span></p> - - -<p>This glorious poem of the first series finds a glorious echo in the -twenty-fifth division of the second; even as the Pyrenean cycle which -opened in the first series is brought in the second to fuller completion -of equal and corresponsive achievement. It is wonderful, even in this -vast world of poetic miracle where nothing is other than wonderful, that -<i>Masferrer</i> should be equal to <i>Aymenllot</i> in frank majesty of -beauty; that even after <i>Le Parricide</i> a fresh depth of tragic -terror should be sounded by <i>Gaïffer-Forge</i>; and that after all he -had already written on fatherhood and sonship, on duty and chivalry, on -penitence and pride, Victor Hugo should have struck so new and so -profound a note as rings in every fine of <i>La Paternité.</i></p> - -<p>But of all echoes and of all responses which reverberate from end to -end of these three great sections of song, the very sweetest, and -perhaps the very deepest, are those evoked by love of little children, -and compassionate reverence for the poor. If but one division were to be -left us out of all the second series, and fate or chance, comparatively -compassionate in its cruelty, gave us our choice which this one should -be, the best judgments might perhaps decide to preserve the twenty-third -at all events. What the words "realism" and "naturalism" do naturally -and really signify in matters of art, the blatant babblers who use them -to signify the photography of all things abject might learn, if shallow -insolence and unclean egotism were suddenly made capable of learning, by -the study of only the two poems which set before us in two different -forms the strength of weakness in the child whose love redeems his -father from death, and the child who can find no comfort but in death -for the lack of a father's love. There is nothing in Homer, in Dante, or -in Shakespeare, the three only poets who can properly be cited for -comparison, of a pathos more poignant in its bitter perfection of -sweetness.</p> - -<p>Among the many good things which seem, for the lovers of poetry, to -have come out of one and so great an evil as the long exile of Hugo from -his country, there is none better or greater than the spiritual -inhalation of breeze and brine into the very heart of his genius, the -miraculous impregnation of his solitary Muse by the sea-wind. This -influence could not naturally but combine with the lifelong influence of -all noble sympathies to attract his admiration and his pity towards the -poor folk of the shore, and to produce from that sense of compassion for -obscurer sorrows and brotherhood with humbler heroism than his own such -work as the poem which describes the charity of a fisherman's wife -towards the children of her dead neighbor. It has all the beautiful -precision and accurate propriety of detail which distinguish the finest -idyls of Theocritus or Tennyson, with a fervor of pathetic and -imaginative emotion which Theocritus never attained, and which Tennyson -has attained but once. All the horror of death, all the trouble and -mystery of darkness, seem as we read to pass into our fancy with the -breath of pervading night, and to vanish with the husband's entrance at -sunrise before the smile with which the wife draws back the curtains of -the cradle.</p> - -<p>This poem, which so many hearts must have treasured among their -choicest memories for now so many years, has found at length its fellow -in the final volume of the book. There is even more savor of the sea in -the great lyric landscape called <i>Les paysans au bord de la mer</i> -than in the idyllic interior called <i>Les pauvres gens.</i> There we -felt the sea-wind and saw the sea-mist through the chinks of door and -window; but here we feel all the sweep of the west wind's wings, and see -all the rush of rain along the stormy shore that the flock of leaping -waves has whitened with the shreddings of their fleece. We remember in -<i>Les Voix Intérieures</i> the all but matchless music of the song of -the sea-wind's trumpet, and in the notes of this new tune we find at -last that music matched and deepened and prolonged. In the great lyric -book which gives us the third of the four blasts blown from <i>Les -Quatre Vents de l'Esprit</i>, there are visions as august and melodies -as austere as this; but outside the vast pale of the master's work we -should look for the likeness of such songs in vain. The key of all its -tenderness if not of all its terror is struck in these two first -verses.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les pauvres gens de la côte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'hiver, quand la mer est haute</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et qu'il fait nuit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Viennent où finit la terre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Voir les flots pleins de mystère</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et pleins de bruit.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils sondent la mer sans bornes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils pensent aux écueils mornes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et triomphants;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'orpheline pâle et seule</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Crie: ô mon père! et l'aïeule</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Dit: mes enfants!</span></p> - - -<p>The verses which translate the landscape are as absolutely incomparable -in their line as those which render the emotion of the watchers. Witness -this:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'on se met en prières,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pendant que joncs et bruyères</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et bois touffus,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vents sans borne et flots sans nombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Jettent dans toute cette ombre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Des cris confus.</span></p> - - -<p>Here, as usual, it is the more tragic aspect of the waters that would -appear to have most deeply impressed the sense or appealed to the spirit -of Victor Hugo. He seems to regard the sea with yet more of awe than of -love, as he may be said to regard the earth with even more of love than -of awe. He has put no song of such sweet and profound exultation, such -kind and triumphant motherhood, into the speaking spirit of the sea as -into the voice of the embodied earth. He has heard in the waves no word -so bountiful and benignant as the message of such verses as these:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">La terre est calme auprès de l'océan grondeur;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La terre est belle; elle a la divine pudeur</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">De se cacher sous les feuillages;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le printemps son amant vient en mai la baiser;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle envoie au tonnerre altier pour l'apaiser</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">La fumée humble des villages.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne frappe pas, tonnerre. Ils sons petits, ceux-ci.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La terre est bonne; elle est grave et sévère aussi;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Les roses sont pures comme elle;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quiconque pense, espère et travaille lui plaît;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'innocence offerte à tout homme est son lait,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et la justice est sa mamelle.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La terre cache l'or et montre les moissons;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elle met dans le flanc des fuyantes saisons</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Le germe des saisons prochaines,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans l'azur les oiseaux qui chuchotent: aimons!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et les sources au fond de l'ombre, et sur les monts</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">L'immense tremblement des chênes.</span></p> - - -<p>The loving loveliness of these divine verses is in sharp contrast -with the fierce resonance of those in which the sea's defiance is cast -as a challenge to the hopes and dreams of mankind:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je suis la vaste mêlée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Reptile, étant l'onde, ailée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Étant le vent;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Force et fuite, haine et vie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Houle immense, poursuivie</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Et poursuivant.</span></p> - - -<p>The motion of the sea was never till now so perfectly done into words -as in these three last lines; but any one to whom the water was as dear -or dearer than the land at its loveliest would have found a delight as -of love no less conceivable than a passion as of hatred in the more -visible and active life of waves, and at least as palpable to the -"shaping spirit of imagination." It remains true, after all, for the -greatest as for the humblest, that—in the words of one of the very -few poets whose verses are fit to quote even after a verse of -Hugo's—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 7em;">we receive but what we give.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">And in our life alone doth nature live;</span></p> - - -<p>so far, at least, as her life concerns us, and is perceptible or -appreciable by our spirit or our sense. A magnificent instance of purely -dramatic vision, in which the lyric note is tempered to the circumstance -of the speakers with a kind of triumphant submission and severe -facility, is <i>La Chanson des Doreurs de Proues.</i> The poet's -unequalled and unapproached variety in mastery of metre and majesty of -color and splendid simplicity of style, no less exact than sublime, and -no less accurate than passionate, could hardly be better shown than by -comparison of the opening verses with the stanza cited above.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nous sommes les doreurs de proues.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les vents, tournant comme des roues,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur la verte rondeur des eaux</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mêlent les lueurs et les ombres,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et dans les plis des vagues sombres</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Traînent les obliques vaisseaux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La bourrasque décrit des courbes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les vents sont tortueux et fourbes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'archer noir souffle dans son cor,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces bruits s'ajoutent aux vertiges,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et c'est nous qui dans ces prodiges</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Faisons rôder des spectres d'or.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Car c'est un spectre que la proue.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le flot l'étreint, l'air la secoue;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fière, elle sort de nos bazars</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pour servir aux éclairs de cible,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et pour être un regard terrible</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Parmi les sinistres hasards.</span></p> - - -<p>It is more than fifty years since <i>Les Orientales</i> rose, radiant -upon the world of letters, and the hand which gave them to mankind has -lost so little of its cunning that we are well-nigh tempted to doubt -whether then, for all its skill and sureness of touch, it had quite the -same strength and might of magnificent craftsmanship as now. There was -fire as well as music on the lips of the young man, but the ardor of the -old man's song seems even deeper and keener than the passion of his -past. The fervent and majestic verses of June 2, 1883, strike at -starting the note of measureless pity and immeasurable indignation which -rings throughout the main part of the fifth and last volume almost -louder and fuller, if possible, than it was wont. All Victor Hugo, we -may say, is in this book; it is as one of those ardent evening skies in -which sunrise and sunset seem one in the flush of overarching color -which glows back from the west to the east with reverberating bloom and -fervor of rose-blossom and fire. There is life enough in it, enough of -the breath and spirit and life-blood of living thought, to vivify a -whole generation of punier souls and feebler hearts with the heat of his -fourscore years. It may be doubted whether there ever lived a poet and -leader of men to whom these glorious verses would be so closely -applicable as to their writer.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un grand esprit en marche a ses rumeurs, ses houles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses chocs, et fait frémir profondément les foules,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et remue en passant le monde autour de lui.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On est épouvanté si l'on n'est ébloui;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'homme comme un nuage erre et change de forme;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Nul, si petit qu'il soit, échappe au souffle énorme;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les plus humbles, pendant qu'il parle, ont le frisson.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ainsi quand, évadé dans le vaste horizon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'aquilon qui se hâte et qui cherche aventure</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tord la pluie et l'éclair, comme de sa ceinture</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Une fille défait en souriant le nœud,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand l'immense vent gronde et passe, tout s'émeut,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pas un brin d'herbe au fond des ravins, que ne touche</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cette rapidité formidable et farouche.</span></p> - - -<p>And this wind "bloweth where it listeth": now it comes to us charged -with all the heart of all the roses in the world; its breath when it -blows towards Greece has in it a murmur as of Shelley's <i>Epipsychidion</i>; -the caress of its love-making has all the freedom and all the purity of -Blake's; now it passes by us in darkness, from depth to depth of the -bitter mystery of night. A vision of ruined worlds, the floating -purgatorial prisons of ruined souls, adrift as hulks on the sea of -darkness everlasting, shows us the harvest in eternity of such seed as -was sown in time by the hands of such guides and rulers of men as we -hear elsewhere speaking softly with each other in the shadows, within -hail of the confessional and the scaffold. The loftiest words of counsel -sound sweeter in the speech of this great spirit than the warmest -whispers of pleasure; and again, the heaviest stroke of damning satire -is succeeded by the tenderest touch of a compassion that would leave not -a bird in captivity. The hand that opens the cage-door is the same which -has just turned the key on the braggart swordsman, neither "victorious" -nor "dead," but condemned to everlasting prison behind the bars of iron -verse.</p> - -<p>But the two long poems which dominate the book, like two twin summits -clothed round with fiery cloud and crowned with stormy sunshine, tower -equal in height and mass of structure with the stateliest in the two -parts preceding. The voice that rolls throughout <i>Les Quatre Jours -d'Elciis</i> the thunder of its burning words reawakens and prolongs the -echo of Félibien's pity and wrath over the murdered corpse of a child -unborn; we recognize in the speaker a kinsman of Welf's, the -unconquerable old castellan of Osbor, delivered only by an act of -charity into the treacherous hands of the princes whom his citadel had -so long defied. Of Elciis, as of him, the poet might have said—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Si la mer prononçait des noms dans ses marées,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô vieillard, ce serait des noms comme le tien.</span></p> - - -<p>Such names will no doubt provoke the soft superior smile of a culture -too refined for any sort of enthusiasm but the elegant ecstasy of -self-worship; and such simplicity will excite, on the other hand, a -deep-mouthed bray of scorn from the whole school or church whose apostle -in France was St. Joseph de Maistre, in England St. Thomas Coprostom, -late of Craigenputtock and Chelsea; the literary lappers of imaginary -blood, the inkhorn swordsmen and spokesmen of immaterial iron. The rage -of their contempt for such as Hugo, the loathing of their scorn for such -as Shelley, ought long since to have abashed the believers in principles -which find no abler defenders or more effective champions than these.</p> - -<p>For it is true that the main truths preached and enforced and -insisted on by such fanatical rhetoricians as Milton, as Mazzini, or as -Hugo, are as old as the very notion of right and wrong, as the rudest -and crudest conception of truth itself; and it is undeniable that the -Gospel according to St. Coprostom has the invaluable merit of pungent -eccentricity and comparatively novel paradox. The evangelist of "golden -silence"—whose own speech, it may be admitted, was "quite other" -than "silvern"—is logically justified in his blatant but ineffable -contempt for the dull old doctrines of mere mercy and righteousness, of -liberty that knows no higher law than duty, of duty that depends for its -existence on the existence of liberty. Such a creed, in the phrase of a -brother philosopher whose "reminiscences" may be gathered from -Shakespeare, and whose views of his contemporaries were identical in -tone and expression with the opinions of Mr. Carlyle on his, was mouldy -before our grandsires had nails on their toes. It is far more -intelligent, more original, more ingenious than all the old cant and -rant against priests and kings and vow-breakers and blood-spillers, to -discover the soul of goodness in Ratbert the Second or Napoleon the -Third, and observingly distill it out into analytic and mono-dramatic -blank verse. And it will never be said that this reaction against the -puerile or senile preference of right to wrong and principle to -prosperity has not been carried far enough in our time. Carlyle, the man -of brass, and Musset, the man of clay, as far apart on all other points -as two writers of genius could well be, have shown themselves at one in -high-souled scorn for "principles of mere rebellion" such as Landor's -and Milton's, or for such "belief in a new Brutus" as might disturb the -dream of Augustulus. But, even as an old paradox becomes with time a -commonplace, so does an old commonplace become in its turn a paradox; -and a generation whose poets and historians have long blown the trumpet -before the legitimacy of Romanoffs or the bastardy of Bonapartes may -properly be startled and scandalized at the childish eccentricity of an -old-world idealist who maintains his obsolete and preposterous belief -that massacre is murder, that robbery is theft, and that perjury is -treason. No newer doctrine, no sounder philosophy, no riper wisdom than -this, can be gathered from the declamations of those idle old -men—as Goneril, for example, would have called them—who -speak this poet's mind again and again in verse which has no more -variety of splendor or magnificence of music than the sea.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Hélas, on voit encor les astres se lever,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'aube sur l'Apennin jeter sa clarté douce,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'oiseau faire son nid avec des brins de mousse,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La mer battre les rocs dans ses flux et reflux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais la grandeur des cœurs c'est ce qu'on ne voit plus.</span></p> - - -<p>There is nothing ingenious in that; it is no better, intellectually -considered, than a passage of Homer or Isaiah.</p> - -<p>But though every verse has the ring of tested gold, and every touch -gives notice of the master's hand, yet the glory even of these <i>Four -Days</i> is eclipsed by the <i>Vision of Dante.</i> Far apart and -opposite as they stand in all matters of poetic style and -method—Dante writing with the rigid and reserved concision of a -Tacitus, Hugo with the rushing yet harmonious profusion of a -Pindar—the later master is the only modern poet who could -undertake without absurdity or presumption to put words worthy of Dante -into Dante's mouth. The brazen clatter of Byron's <i>Prophecy</i> was -not redeemed or brought into tune by the noble energy and sound insight -of the political sympathies expressed in the accent of a stump-orator to -the tune of a barrel-organ. But a verse of Hugo's falls often as solid -and weighty and sure, as full in significance of perfect and pregnant -sound, as even a verse of Alighieri's. He therefore, but he alone, had -the power and the right to call up the spirit of Dante now thirty years -ago, and bid it behold all the horrors of Europe in 1853; the Europe of -Haynau and Radetzky, of Nicholas the First and Napoleon the last. Any -great modern poet's notion of an everlasting hell must of course be less -merely material than Dante's mechanism of hot and cold circles, fire and -ice, ordure and mire; but here is the same absolute and equitable assent -to justice, the same fierce and ardent fidelity to conscience, the same, -logic and the same loyalty as his.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô sentence! ô peine sans refuge!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tomber dans le silence et la brume à jamais!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'abord quelque clarté des lumineux sommets</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vous laisse distinguer vos mains désespérées.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On tombe, on voit passer des formes effarées,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Bouches ouvertes, fronts ruisselants de sueur,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des visages hideux qu'éclaire une lueur.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puis on ne voit plus rien. Tout s'efface et recule.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La nuit morne succède au sombre crépuscule.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On tombe. On n'est pas seul dans ces limbes d'en bas;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On sent frissonner ceux qu'on ne distingue pas;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On ne sait si ce sont des hydres ou des hommes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On se sent devenir les larves que nous sommes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On entrevoit l'horreur des lieux inaperçus,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'abîme au-dessous, et l'abîme au-dessus.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puis tout est vide! on est le grain que le vent sème.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On n'entend pas le cri qu'on à poussé soi-même;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On sent les profondeurs qui s'emparent de vous;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les mains ne peuvent plus atteindre les genoux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On lève au ciel les yeux et l'on voit l'ombre horrible;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On est dans l'impalpable, on est dans l'invisible;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des souffles par moments passent dans cette nuit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Puis on ne sent plus rien.—Pas un vent, pas un bruit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pas un souffle; la mort, la nuit; nulle rencontre;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Rien pas même une chute affreuse ne se montre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'on songe à la vie, au soleil, aux amours,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'on pense toujours, et l'on tombe toujours!</span></p> - - -<p>The resurrection of the victims to give evidence at the summons of the -archangel—a heavy cloud of witnesses,</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Triste, livide, énorme, ayant un air de rage—</span></p> - - -<p>men bound to the yoke like beasts, women with bosoms gashed by the -whip, children with their skulls cleft open—is direful as any less -real and actual vision of the elder hell.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les cris d'enfant surtout venaient à mon oreille;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Car, dans cette nuit-là, gouffre ou l'équité veille,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La voix des innocents sur toute autre prévaut,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est le cri des enfants qui monte le plus haut,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le vagissement fait le bruit du tonnerre.</span></p> - - -<p>The appeal for justice which follows, with its enumeration of horrors -unspeakable except by history and poetry, is followed in its turn by the -evocation of the soldiers whom this army of martyrs has with one voice -designated to the angel of judgment as their torturers and murderers. -The splendid and sonorous verses in which the muster of these legions -after legions, with their garments rolled in blood, is made to defile -before the eyes of reader or hearer, can be matched only by the -description of the Swiss mercenaries in <i>Le Régiment du baron -Madruce.</i></p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un grand vautour doré les guidait comme un phare.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tant qu'ils étaient au fond de l'ombre, la fanfare,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme un aigle agitant ses bruyants ailerons,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Chantait claire et joyeuse au front des escadrons,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Trompettes et tambours sonnaient, et des centaures</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Frappaient des ronds de cuivre entre leurs mains sonores;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mais, dès qu'ils arrivaient devant le flamboiement,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les clairons effarés se taisaient brusquement,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tout ce bruit s'éteignait. Reculant en désordre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Leurs chevaux se cabraient et cherchaient à les mordre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et la lance et l'épée échappaient à leur poing.</span></p> - - -<p>Challenged to make answer, the assassins of Italy and Hungary plead -that they were but the sword, their captains were the hand. These are -summoned in their turn, and cast their crimes in turn upon the judges -who bade them shed blood and applauded their blood-shedding in the name -of law and justice. And the judges and lawgivers are summoned in their -stead.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces hommes regardaient l'ange d'un air surpris:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme, en lettres de feu, rayonnait sur sa face</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Son nom, Justice, entre eux ils disaient à voix basse:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que veut dire ce mot qu'il porte sur son front?</span></p> - - -<p>Charged with their complicity in all the public crime and shame and -horror of their period, these in turn cast the burden of their -wrong-doing on the princes who commanded them and they obeyed, seeing -how the priests and soothsayers had from all time assured them that -kings were the images of God. The images of God are summoned, and -appear, in the likeness of every form of evil imaginable by man.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Devant chaque fantôme, en la brume glacée.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ayant le vague aspect d'une croix renversée,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Venait un glaive nu, ferme et droit dans le vent,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Qu'aucun bras ne tenait et qui semblait vivant.</span></p> - - -<p>Strange shapes of winged and monstrous beasts were harnessed to the -chariots on which the thrones of the earth were borne forward. The -figure seated on the last of them will be recognizable beyond all -possibility of mistake by any reader whose eyes have ever rested on a -face which beyond most human faces bore the visible image and -superscription of the soul behind it.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les trônes approchaient sous les lugubres cieux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On entendait gémir autour des noirs essieux</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La clameur de tous ceux qu'avaient broyés leurs roues;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ils venaient, ils fendaient l'ombre comme des proues;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sous un souffle invisible ils semblaient se mouvoir;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Rien n'était plus étrange et plus farouche à voir</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que ces chars effrayants tourbillonnant dans l'ombre.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans le gouffre tranquille où l'humanité sombre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ces trônes de la terre apparaissaient hideux.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le dernier qui venait, horrible au milieu d'eux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Était à chaque marche encombré de squelettes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et de cadavres froids aux bouches violettes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le plancher rougi fumait, de sang baigné;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le char qui le portait dans l'ombre était traîné</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Par un hibou tenant dans sa griffe une hache.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un être aux yeux de loup, homme par la moustache,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au sommet de ce char s'agitait étonné,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et se courbait furtif, livide et couronné.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Pas un de ces césars à l'allure guerrière</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ne regardait cet homme. A l'écart, et derrière,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vêtu d'un noir manteau qui semblait un linceul,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Espèce de lépreux du trône, il venait seul;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il posait les deux mains sur sa face morose</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme pour empêcher qu'on y vît quelque chose;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand parfois il ôtait ses mains en se baissant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">En lettres qui semblaient faites avec du sang</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On lisait sur son front ces trois mots:—Je le jure.</span></p> - - -<p>It is a fearful thing, said the Hebrew, to fall into the hands of the -living God; and it is a fearful thing for a malefactor to fall into the -hands of an ever-living poet. The injured Caesars of -Rome—Tiberius, for example, and Domitian—have not even yet -been delivered by the most conscientious efforts of German and -Anglo-German Cæsarists out of the prison whose keys are kept by -Juvenal; and a greater than Juvenal is here.</p> - -<p>Summoned to make answer to the charge of the angel of judgment, even -these also have their resource for evasion, and cast all their crimes -upon the Pope.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il nous disait: Je suis celui qui parle aux rois;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quiconque me résiste et me brave est impie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce qu'ici-bas j'écris, là-haut Dieu le copie.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'église, mon épouse, éclose au mont Thabor,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A fait de la doctrine une cage aux fils d'or,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et comme des oiseaux j'y tiens toutes les âmes.</span></p> - - -<p>This man had blessed the murderers in their triumph, and cursed their -victims in the grave:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa ceinture servait de corde à nos potences.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il liait de ses mains l'agneau sons nos sentences;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et quand on nous criait: Grâce! il nous criait: Feu!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">C'est à lui que le mal revient. Voilà, grand Dieu,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ce qu'il a fait: voilà ce qu'il nous a fait faire.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cet homme était le pôle et l'axe de la sphère;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il est le responsable et nous le dénonçons!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Seigneur, nous n'avons fait que suivre ses leçons.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Seigneur, nous n'avons fait que suivre son exemple.</span></p> - - -<p>And the pontiff whose advent and whose promises had been hailed with -such noble trust and acclaimed with such noble thankfulness by those who -believed in him as a deliverer—by Landor among others, and by Hugo -himself—the Caiaphas-Iscariot whose benediction and consecrated -massacre and anointed perjury with the rancid oil of malodorous gladness -above its fellows in, empire and in crime—is summoned out of -darkness to receive sentence by the sevenfold sounding of trumpets.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vêtu de lin plus blanc qu'un encensoir qui fume,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il avait, spectre blême aux idoles pareil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les baisers de la foule empreints sur son orteil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dans sa droite un bâton comme l'antique archonte,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sur son front la tiare, et dans ses yeux la honte.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De son cou descendait un long manteau doré,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et dans son poignet gauche il tenait, effaré,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Comme un voleur surpris par celui qu'il dérobe,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Des clefs qu'il essayait de cacher sous sa robe.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Il était effrayant à force de terreur.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand surgit ce vieillard, on vit dans la lueur</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'ombre et le mouvement de quelqu'un qui se penche.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">À l'apparition de cette robe blanche,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au plus noir de l'abîme un tonnerre gronda.</span></p> - - -<p>Then from all points of the immeasurable spaces, from the womb of the -cloud and the edge of the pit, is witness given against Pope Pius IX. by -the tyrants and the victims, mothers and children and old men, the -judges and the judged, the murderers mingling with the murdered, great -and small, obscure and famous.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tous ceux que j'avais vus passer dans les ténèbres,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Avançant leur front triste, ouvrant leur œil terni,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Fourmillement affreux qui peuplait l'infini,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tous ces spectres, vivant, parlant, riant naguère,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Martyrs, bourreaux, et gens du peuple et gens de guerre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Regardant l'homme blanc d'épouvante ébloui,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Elevèrent la main et crièrent: C'est lui.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et pendant qu'ils criaient, sa robe devint rouge.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Au fond du gouffre où rien ne tressaille et ne bouge</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Un écho répéta:—C'est lui!—Les sombres rois</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dirent:—C'est lui! c'est lui! c'est lui! voilà sa croix!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les clefs du paradis sont dans ses mains fatales.—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et l'homme-loup, debout sur les cadavres pâles</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dont le sang tiède encor tombait dans l'infini,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Cria d'une voix rauque et sourde:—Il m'a béni!</span></p> - - -<p>A judgment less terrible than what follows is that by which Dante long -ago made fast the gates of hell upon Nicholas and Boniface and Clement -with one stroke of his inevitable hand. The ghastly agony of the -condemned is given with all the bitterest realism of the great elder -anti-papist who sent so many vicars of Christ to everlasting torment for -less offenses than those of Mastai-Ferretti.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">Lui se tourna vers l'ange en frissonnant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et je vis le spectacle horrible et surprenant</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">D'un homme qui vieillit pendant qu'on le regarde.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'agonie éteignit sa prunelle hagarde,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa bouche bégaya, son jarret se rompit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses cheveux blanchissaient sur son front décrépit,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses tempes se ridaient comme si les années</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">S'étaient subitement sur sa face acharnées,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ses yeux pleuraient, ses dents claquaient comme au gibet</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Les genoux d'un squelette, et sa peau se plombait,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et, stupide, il baissait, à chaque instant plus pâle,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Sa tête qu'écrasait la tiare papale.</span></p> - - -<p>From the sentence passed upon him after the avowal extorted by the -angel of doom that he has none in the world above him but God alone on -whom to cast the responsibility of his works, not a word may be taken -away for the purpose of quotation, as not a word could have been added -to it by Dante or by Ezekiel himself. But about the eternity of his -damnation there is not, happily for the human conscience, any manner of -doubt possible; it must endure as long as the poem which proclaims it: -in other words, as long as the immortality of poetry itself.</p> - -<p>This great and terrible poem, the very crown or coping-stone of all -the <i>Châtiments</i>, has a certain affinity with two others in which -the poet's yearning after justice and mercy has borne his passionate -imagination as high and far as here. In <i>Sultan Mourad</i> his -immeasurable and incomparable depth of pity and charity seems well nigh -to have swallowed up all sense of necessary retribution: it is perhaps -because the portentous array of crimes enumerated is remote in time and -place from all experience of ours that conscience can allow the -tenderness and sublimity of its inspiration to justify the moral and -ratify the sentence of the poem:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Viens! tu fus bon un jour, sois à jamais heureux.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Entre, transfiguré! tes crimes ténébreux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Ô roi, derrière toi s'effacent dans les gloires;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tourne la tête, et vois blanchir tes ailes noires.</span></p> - - -<p>But in the crowning song of all the great three cycles every need and -every instinct of the spirit may find the perfect exaltation of content. -The vast and profound sense of ultimate and inevitable equity which -animates every line of it is as firm and clear as the solid and massive -splendor of its articulate expression. The date of it is outside and -beyond the lapse of the centuries of time; but the rule of the law of -righteousness is there more evident and indisputable than ever during -the flight of these. Hardly in the Hebrew prophecies is such distinct -and vivid sublimity, as of actual and all but palpable vision, so -thoroughly impregnated with moral and spiritual emotion. Not a verse of -all that strike root into the memory forever but is great alike by -imagination and by faith. In such a single line as this—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Que qui n'entendit pas le remords l'entendrait—</span></p> - - -<p>there is the very note of conscience done into speech, cast into form, -forged into substance.</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 7em;">Avec de l'équité condensée en airain.</span></p> - - -<p>But this couplet for immensity of imaginative range, is of one birth -with the sublimest verses in the Book of Job:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et toute l'épouvante éparse au ciel est sœur</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De cet impénétrable et morne avertisseur.</span></p> - - -<p>From the magnificent overture to the second series, in which the poet -has embodied in audible and visible symbol the vision whence this book -was conceived—a vision so far surpassing the perhaps unconsciously -imitative inspiration of the Apocalypse, with its incurably lame and -arduously prosaic efforts to reproduce the effect or mimic the majesty -of earlier prophecies, that we are amazed if not scandalized to find -that book actually bracketed in one sublime passage of this prelude with -the greatest spiritual poem in the world, the Oresteia of -Æschylus—the reader would infer that any student wishing to give -a notion of the <i>Légende des Siècles</i> ought to have dwelt less -than I have done upon a few of its innumerable beauties, and more than I -have done upon the impression of its incomparable grandeur. But samples -of pure sweetness and beauty are more easily and perhaps more profitably -detached for quotation from their context than samples of a sublimity -which can only be felt by full and appreciative study of an entire and -perfect poem. And it is rather from the prelude itself than from any -possible commentary on it that a thoughtful and careful reader will seek -to gather the aim and meaning of the book. It is there likened to a vast -disjointed ruin lit by gleams of light—"le reste effrayant de -Babel"—a palace and a charnel in one, built by doom for death to -dwell in:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Où se posent pourtant parfois, quand elles l'osent,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De la façon dont l'aile et le rayon se posent,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">La liberté, lumière, et l'espérance, oiseau.</span></p> - - -<p>But over and within this book—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 15em;">traduit</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Du passé, du tombeau, du gouffre et de la nuit—</span></p> - - -<p>faith shines as a kindling torch, hope breathes as a quickening wind, -love burns as a cleansing fire. It is tragic, not with the hopeless -tragedy of Dante or the all but hopeless tragedy of Shakespeare. Whether -we can or cannot share the infinite hope and inviolable faith to which -the whole active and suffering life of the poet has borne such unbroken -and imperishable witness, we cannot in any case but recognize the -greatness and heroism of his love for mankind. As in the case of -Æschylus, it is the hunger and thirst after righteousness, the deep -desire for perfect justice in heaven as on earth, which would seem to -assure the prophet's inmost heart of its final triumph by the prevalence -of wisdom and of light over all claims and all pleas established or -asserted by the children of darkness, so in the case of Victor Hugo is -it the hunger and thirst after reconciliation, the love of loving -kindness, the master passion of mercy, which persists in hope and -insists on faith even in face of the hardest and darkest experience -through which a nation or a man can pass. When evil was most triumphant -throughout Europe, he put forth in a single book of verse, published -with strange difficulty against incredible impediments, such a protest -as would entitle him to say, in the very words he has given to the -Olympian of old—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Quand, dans le saint paean par les mondes chanté,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'harmonie amoindrie avorte ou dégénère,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Je rends le rhythme aux cieux par un coup de tonnerre:</span></p> - - -<p>and now more than ever would the verses that follow befit the lips of -their author, if speaking in his own person:—</p> - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Mon crâne plein d'échos, plein de lueurs, plein d'yeux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Est l'antre éblouissant du grand Pan radieux;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">En me voyant on croit entendre le murmure</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">De la ville habitée et de la moisson mûre,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Le bruit du gouffre au chant de l'azur réuni,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">L'onde sur l'océan, le vent dans l'infini,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Et le frémissement des deux ailes du cygne.</span></p> - - -<p>It is held unseemly to speak of the living as we speak of the dead; -when Victor Hugo has joined the company of his equals, but apparently -not till then, it will seem strange to regard the giver of all the gifts -we have received from him with less than love that deepens into worship, -than worship that brightens into love. Meantime it is only in the phrase -of one of his own kindred, poet and exile and prophet of a darker age -than his, that the last word should here be spoken of the man by whose -name our century will be known forever to all ages and nations that keep -any record or memory of what was highest and most memorable in the -spiritual history of the past:—</p> - - - - -<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">Onorate l'altissimo poeta.</span></p> - - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Victor Hugo, by Algernon Charles Swinburne - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTOR HUGO *** - -***** This file should be named 60466-h.htm or 60466-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/4/6/60466/ - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Internet Archive.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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