denied in Act III., reaffirmed with hesitation in Act IV., and denied in Act V. Mr. Swinburne's somewhat hysterical admiration declares this play "sufficient 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." But surely the judicious reader if haply readers of "Cromwell" can be called judicious - will see in this huge mass, whose length, though not that alone, excluded it from the stage, no masterpiece of any kind, but rather the first essay of a man of genius who has felt the power of Corneille and Shakspere and attempts an imitation of their processes. Indeed, whole scenes recall passages in "Hamlet," "Julius Cæsar," and "Macbeth;" and the would-be Corneillian style is often antiquated and forced, while occasionally it falls to the level of the mock-heroic. What is most interesting to note here, in the evolution of the drama, is the great number of persons brought on the stage contrary to French tradition, as well as the cultivation of "local color," which though, as usual with the Romanticists, untrue to fact, is vivid and successfully maintained. But in this very year the "Ode to the Vendôme Column" should have shown Hugo that his strength and that of Romanticism lay in lyric poetry. It struck the key-note of the best work of his prime, and it showed also that the glories of the Napoleonic legend were beginning to dispel the prejudices of a Royalist nurture and the teachings of sober reason. Provoked by an insult to the marshals of Napoleon, it was 1 Victor Hugo, p. 11. written while his blood was at white heat; but if the ode bears marks of emotion, it bears none of haste. Such lines as those that prophesy how "Vendée shall sharpen its sword on the monument of Waterloo," or recall how Germany bears printed on its forehead "the sandal of Charlemagne, the spur of Napoleon," 1 had been till then approached only by Corneille. And this ode is no isolated flight, though before Hugo had completed another volume of lyrics he turned once more to the drama and produced "Amy Robsart," a play taken from an episode in Walter Scott's "Kenilworth," which failed on the stage and was not printed till many years later. He wrote also "Marion de Lorme," which the censorship would not suffer to be either acted or printed, thanks to a fancied allusion to the then reigning Charles X.; and so it happened that "Cromwell" was followed not by works that only the fame of their author preserves from oblivion, but by "Les Orientales," one of the most original of all his volumes of verse, a collection that Brunetière calls "the gymnastics of a talent in training, studies in design, color, and speed;" while Swinburne pronounces it "the most musical and many-colored volume that ever had glorified the language," though the careful reader will not seldom find the mark of Romantic artificiality where he sought the mint-stamp of genuine poet-gold. Hugo's Orient is that of Byron and Ali Pasha, but it 1 Tout s'arme, et la Vendée aiguisera son glaive Sur la pierre de Waterloo L'histoire Montre empreints aux deux fronts du vautour d'Allemagne L'éperon de Napoléon. (Odes, III. vii. 4.) is also the Moorish Orient of Spain, some breath of which lingered in his recollections of childhood; most of all, however, it is the Orient of his imagination. On the whole, the Spanish pieces are the truest and best; but "Les Djinns," the most remarkable single poem in the volume and one of the most striking pieces of metrical art in the world, is more Turkish than Mauresque. "Le Voile," too, an Albanian tale of jealous. family honor, is astonishingly brilliant in its rendering of a purely fictitious local color. But in "Vou" and in "Sara la baigneuse "there is a plaintive delicacy and a luxurious joy of girlish life that strike a more realistic Spanish note. As a piece of riotous fancy, the ode "Fire in the Sky," a dance of Sodom and Gomorrah whirling to damnation, surpasses in terror as it does in art the prose of "Han" or of "Bug-Jargal." Very striking and with a touch of philosophic symbolism is "Mazeppa," borne away in a rush of destiny on his fiery horse, as a youth by his genius, but overcoming and conquering at last. Yet these word-pictures are fruits for whose enjoyment the foreigner must strive and climb. Let us pass to that which, though less exquisite, hangs on lower branches. a The "Orientales" were followed by "Hernani," a drama not often acted, but still read by all who care for the history of the stage or for French literature, because it marks the triumph of Romanticism, triumph extorted from the Bourbon dynasty only a few months before they went hence to be seen no more. "Hernani," as has been said, was not the first Romantic drama, but it stood for a principle, as Dumas' " Henri III." had not done. The story of the conflict over it has often been told, but by none more graphically than THE YOUNG HUGO. 207 1843 Wes Burgraves by Gautier, its protagonist. The play had been accepted by the Théâtre Français in October, 1829; but it took nearly six months to overcome the opposition of individual prejudice and Academic tradition. Delay only heated the passions of both sides; and it was with confident though calculating generalship that Hugo published his determination to employ no claque of hired applauders, for by this he made the play a standard of battle around which every Romanticist might fight for the cause of individual emancipation. He thus secured a devoted band of enthusiastic young men who delighted to enflame classical prejudices, not alone by their views, but by their clothes. Historical is the garb of Gautier, who led his cohort to the first performance in green trousers, a scarlet vest, black coat trimmed with velvet, and an overcoat of gray with green satin lining, the whole set off by long wavy curls. Among his fellows were Balzac the novelist, Delacroix the painter, Berlioz the composer, and many lesser champions of "liberty" in the liberal arts. The opposition was more numerous and hardly less intense. Unreasoning support was met with equally unreasoning condemnation; and from February 26 to June 5, 1830, the battle raged nightly, till there was not a verse that had not at some time been applauded or hissed. The result, if not a victory for "Hernani," was a victory for all that it represented. The fetters of the unities, as Boileau understood them, were broken. No further organized effort was made to resist the retrograde evolution of the Romantic drama to its collapse with Hugo's "Burgraves" in 1843. Metrically and stylistically "Hernani "Hernani" was epoch 1 Histoire du romantisme. See also Paul Albert, Les Origines du romantisme, and Coppée, La Bataille d'Hernani. making. Hugo was far more radical here than in his odes, and he boasts justly of his services in restoring the mot propre, the concrete noun, to a place of honor. Now first, as he says, what Delille and his fellows would have called the " olfactories became a nose, the long golden fruit" a pear; he "crushed the spirals of paraphrase," and "said to Vaugelas, You are only a jaw-bone." 1 Then, too, his prosody was here more free, perhaps as a result of his study of Goethe's alexandrines in the second part of "Faust," which Hugo read at this time. But as a drama whether of plot or of character the play was fatally weak. Since Schiller's "Robbers," all outlaws had been magnanimous; but Hernani had a pundonor that even Castilians found exaggerated. Hernani owes his life to Don Ruy Gomez, and has promised to hold it at his call. Both love Doña Sol, who, as a Romantic heroine, naturally prefers the bandit to the duke. But as Hernani is about to enjoy the fruition of his love, his rival recalls his promise by a signal on the horn, and honor forces the bridegroom to take the poison that his bride generously shares. This close has much pathos, but it is rather elegiac 1 J'ai dit à la narine: Et mais! tu n'est qu'un nez! J'ai dit au long fruit d'or: Mais tu n'est qu'une poire! J'ai dit à Vaugelas : Tu n'es qu'une mâchoire! . . J'ai de la périphrase écrasé les spirales. (Contemplations, I. vii.) An example of these "spirals" may not be without interest. Du Belloy, in his "Siège de Calais," which a contemporary critic calls one of the two most lachrymose successes of the eighteenth century" (its date is 1765), wants to say that dog's meat was dear; he says it thus: Le plus vil aliment, rébut de la misère, Mais aux derniers abois ressource terrible et chère, De la fidélité respectable soutien, Manque à l'or prodigué du riche citoyen. |