system by which Condillac analysed every faculty into sense. These considerations tend to confirm the wisdom of complete toleration to the freedom of all opinion. Had some mistaken benevolence of intention suppressed the publication of Hume's sceptical theories, because of the temporary harm they might effect, it would have suppressed also all those great arguments for an immaterial soul in man, which have enlarged and ennobled the whole world of thought. Kant would have continued in "his dogmatic slumber;" Reid would have remained in quiet adhesion to Locke; the materialism of Condillac would still be reigning over the schools of France.

Our obligations to genius, even where it may not mean to be our special benefactor, are so great, that our gratitude is as involuntary as the service it acknowledges. Every genius, it is true, however eminent, may find its hostile critics; but, in spite of the critics, who are frequently right in detail, we continue our homage to every eminent genius on the whole. What should we know to-day, if genius had not been

free to guess, right or wrong, through the long yesterday? It was said of Plato, "If he had not erred, he would have done less." The saying does not exaggerate, it falls short of, the truth. For it may rather be said of every great man, "If he had not erred he would have done nothing." And our obligations to genius are the greater, because we are seldom able to trace them. We cannot mount up to the sources from which we derive the ideas that make us what we are. Few of my readers may have ever read Chaucer; fewer still the 'Principia' of Newton. Yet how much poorer the minds of all my readers would be if Chaucer and Newton had never written! All the genius of the past is in the atmosphere we breathe at present. But who shall resolve to each individual star the rays of the heat and the light, whose effects are felt by all, whose nature is defined by none? This much, at least, we know; that in heat the tendency to equilibrium is constant; that in light the rays cross each other in all directions, yet never interfere the one with the other.

incurious eye, rather than in patiently, lovingly, laboriously striving to express the actual visions of his own soul, confident that whatever is truly felt by him will be felt as true by others; or supremely careless whether all the world fails to recognise its truth, so that his own soul affirms it. Far be it from us, in wantonness of speech, even to hint that Victor Hugo is insincere, in the ordinary meaning of that word. But we are deeply convinced of his having the insincerity which weakens imperfect artists, and which betrays itself by their eyes being intently fixed on the public rather than on their work; so that instead of painting the vision they see, as they really see it, they paint what they imagine the public will expect to see, or will most applaud. In its lowest form this insincerity becomes claptrap. In every form it is untruth -sometimes the untruth of conventional "idealism," sometimes the untruth of insidious flattery of popular prejudice.

There can be no doubt that Victor Hugo is a very effective writer. He produces a succession of pictures which startle the most incurious; and such is the vigour of his imagination, that he not unfrequently kindles the imagination of his readers. But he rarely touches the deeper chords of their minds, and never with more than a passing breath. Hence we are startled, but not moved; we admire-we do not love. No great heart is felt to be throbbing through his works; no serene mind is raying out its effulgence. We think him immensely clever, and rather silly; bold, original, and bombastic; swaggering and blasphemous, even among swag gering and blaspheming Frenchmen. He has incomparable ingenuity and fertility in the mise en scene, but this scenic splendour only prepares us for a tragedy which is never developed. It is the same with his style-a style glittering with imagery, pointed with epigrams, but never at the service of

truth, nor ever expressing immortal phrases. One cannot say that, considered as mere style, it is not rich and rare; but it charms us no more than the exquisite jewels which glitter on some tawdry image of the Madonna. As a man, Victor Hugo seems to us moved by generous and noble sentiments, and his verses show an exquisite tenderness towards children. We remember many offensive passages in his writings, but no page that is base or mean. Nevertheless he repels all our sympathy by an abiding untruthfulness in conception and presentation. In France this is perhaps felt otherwise. But we think every Englishman will understand what we mean when we remark, that the writer who could account for the fall of Napoleon by saying "Il gênait Dieu," must be one so intrepid in silly bombast, so willing to sacrifice every consideration to paltry "effect," that he could never be fondly cherished in this country. The habitual irreverence with which modern French writers handle the most sacred themes, can alone explain the audacity of such a phrase as the one just quoted; but what can explain its transcendant foolishness? Did Victor Hugo really think what he said? or was he utterly indifferent whether the thought were monstrous, provided the epigram were startling?

We could cite many passages of a kindred tone, though we remember only one more supremely disgraceful. That one is the speech of the monk Claude Frollo, when describing Esmeralda, the dancing gypsy; a speech we dare not soil our pages by repeating, but to which we refer any reader who may suppose we are using language too strong for the occasion. We know nothing equal to it in blasphemous bad taste-in irreverent silliness. Although these passages are exceptional, they betray an irreverent tone of mind; and this is also seen in numerous passages which a more serious writer, or one with a finer taste, would

never have allowed to escape him. Such, for example, is his reply to those critics who twitted him, and justly, with his inordinate fondness for antithesis. "I am reproached with my love of antithesis," he says, as if God were not a greater inventor of antitheses than I!"

This leads us to remark, that antithesis seems to be his secret of creation. By this method he seeks his effects. When he wishes to exhibit parental love, he selects two infamous parents Lucrezia Borgia, as the exponent of maternal love; Triboulet, the king's jester and pander, as the exponent of paternal love. No attempt is made to rehabilitate these characters, except through our sympathy with their parental yearnings. He never pretends that they were virtuous, but misunderstood; far from it the very law of antithesis urges him to deepen the shadows of their hideousness, in order that the beauty of their instinct may be thrown into higher relief. This is how he explains his object :

:

"The idea which produced 'Le Roi s'amuse,' and the idea which produced 'Lucrèce Borgia,' were born at the same moment, on the same inspiration (sur le même point du cœur). What truly is the intimate thought, hidden beneath the three or four concentric layers of 'Le Roi s'amuse'? It is this: Take the most hideous, the most repulsive, the most complete physical deformity; place it there where it stands out in strongest relief, at the lowest stage of the social edifice; lighten up this miserable creature on all sides by the strongest contrasts; and then fling him a soul, and in this soul place the purest sentiment given to man-paternal love. What will happen? Why, that this sublime sentiment, warmed under certain conditions, will transform this degraded creature before your eyes; the creature who is little, will become grand; the deformity will become beauty. That is the basis of 'Le Roi s'amuse.' Well! and what is 'Lucrèce Borgia'? Take the most hideous, the most repulsive, the most complete moral deformity; place it there where it is in strongest relief in the heart of a woman-with all those conditions of physical beauty and regal

grandeur which give prominence to crime; and then place beside this moral deformity a pure sentiment-the purest the woman can feel-maternal love: in your monster place a mother, and the monster will create interest; the monster will draw tears; and that creature who was terrible will be pitiable, and that deformed soul will become almost beautiful in your eyes."

We need not pause to unravel this tangled skein of truth and falsehood as a matter of doctrine. Our object in quoting it is to make the reader fully aware of the author's method of composition; which he afterwards expresses in one of his ambitious and absurd epigrams: "à la chose la plus hideuse mêlez une idée réligieuse, elle deviendra sainte et pure. Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croix." And he has acted up to his precepts. When he wishes to paint woman's love, he selects two public courtezans, Marion de l'Orme and Tisbe. No attempt is made to conceal their profession; love sanctifies all

"L'amour m'a refait ma virginité." Man's love for woman is exhibited in the breasts of a monk, a monster, and a valet-Claude Frollo, Quasimodo, Ruy Blas. The monk and the monster love a dancing gypsy; the valet loves a queen. Again, in 'Les Burgraves' we see this method of antithesis ludicrously exhibited. The grandeur of old age is represented in the persons of a bandit and a fratricide. The Burgrave is full of vigour in his hundredth year, while the only youthful character in the play is a girl dying of a slow disease.

A glance at his works will disclose that it is on this principle they are constructed; the "effects" are antitheses; the epigrams are antitheses; hence the general air of factitiousness. It is not to be denied that by this means many very striking situations are produced. What can be more striking than that of the poor, deaf, deformed Quasimodo exposed on the pillory? He is wildly imploring for water to quench his raging thirst, and receiving instead no

thing but the gibes and blows of the multitude. He sees Esmeralda approach, and thinks that she-remembering his violence to her last night, violence which he is now expiating on the pillory-is also about to smite and insult him, and he finds her pouring the delicious water down his burning throat. What, again, can be more suggestive than the close of 'Le Roi s'amuse'? Triboulet, the despised, humpbacked courtfool, has been outraged by the king, who has ravished his beloved child, and now he glories in the supreme hour of vengeance. The king lies at his feet; the royal corpse is enveloped in a sack, which the jester makes his footstool. But the jester is not really trampling on his king; it is on his own daughter's corpse that his foot rests. The close of 'Lucrèce Borgia' is even more scenically striking. The guests at an orgie are startled by the sudden opening of folding-doors, which reveals the ghastly spectacle of a row of coffins, candles burning, and priests, ready with the crucifix, chanting a De profundis. Lucrezia appears, announces with fiendish triumph that the guests are all her guests, are all poisoned, and that their coffins await them. She tries in vain to save one, Gennaro, and is stabbed by him as she exclaims66 Je suis ta mère!"

Fine these scenes unquestionably are as situations; but if we look for the human tragedy which ought to have been wrought out of them, we shall be disappointed. A great poet Iwould have irradiated these scenes with the light of passion; would have had his own nature stirred to its depths, and found there the expressions to stir our hearts; but Victor Hugo finds nothing, absolutely nothing. His imagination is entirely satisfied with the picture; and hence we regard him in the light rather of a great scene-painter than of a dramatist.

Goethe, so ready to acknowledge all merit, expressed himself wholly unmoved by Notre Dame de Paris.' He saw the fertile vigour of the

young poet's imagination; but he also saw that the characters were merely wooden dolls, which the author might belabour as much as he liked, no sympathy could be excited for them. Esmeralda and Quasimodo are wonderful creations; but they are wholly unhuman, and only flatter the picturesque imagination. In Victor Hugo's last romance, 'Les Misérables,' we miss the creative genius which gives so great a charm, and has given so immense a popularity, to 'Notre Dame de Paris;' nor do we find that years have brought the philosophic mind," or added any chords to the lyre. Like most of his works, it has excited a great "sensation in France; and as even that generally acute critic, Emile Montégut, seems to consider it a masterpiece, dwelling with peculiar emphasis on its logique, we will lay before our readers a tolerably full analysis of 'Fantine,' which forms the first part of the work, leaving it to them to seek for the eight succeeding volumes, if they are tempted by these two.

'Fantine' opens with an elaborated-we cannot say elaboratepicture of a bishop-saint. No less than one hundred and sixty-five pages are devoted to the presentation of this character; and, to our surprise, no sooner is the character presented, than, after serving the author in one scene, and giving one incident to the story, it disappears for ever.

In constructive art this is as great a mistake as if the portico of the Parthenon were the entrance to a shed; and this objection would equally apply if the picture were as admirable as it is ambitious; if the portico were that of a Parthenon, instead of being a lath-and-plaster imitation. We have intimated that we consider this portrait a failure, although it is lovingly painted, and some of its touches are really touching. It fails because it is not true. The bishop is meant to be good, and is only "goody." His humanity is sacrificed to unreal sentiment of the