94 Our Imaginary Conversations. 



Victor Hugo. 



We have indeed one instance of a precious talent in Le Grand Chancel, 

 who is reported to have written a comedy in his ninth year j and one speci- 

 men of an uneducated poet in a carpenter, named Adam Bellant, whose 

 verses obtained some notoriety in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, but of 

 neither of these men do I know anything except the name. Fortunately, 

 no person has yet been found mad enough to exhume their remains. 

 Algernon Sydney. 



At a more convenient season I should like to resume this conversation, 

 but at present I am anxious to confine myself to that volume of your 

 poems entitled Les Orientates. If I recollect right, they experienced a 

 rather ungentle reception from some of the Parisian critics. 



Fie tor Hugo. 



Many of my critics objected to the nature of the subject. Upon this 

 point, however, I cannot admit their right of decision. I cannot see what 

 authority a critic has to object to the subject of a poem, any more than to 

 inquire why the author of it has not cut down that tree, or planted that 

 flower, or painted his library that particular colour. Is the poem good, or 

 is it bad ? This I take to be the limit of criticism. I have always set 

 myself up against that party of mental geometricians, who would parcel 

 out the intellectual world, and divide it into minute principalities and 

 properties. 



Algernon Sydney. 



May I ask what suggested Les Orientates to your mind ? 

 Victor Hugo. 



You will think me very fanciful when I tell you, that they were origina- 

 ted by the contemplation of the setting sun. But in reality, my imagina- 

 tion, as you may have perceived, has always been partial to the wild and 

 picturesque manners of oriental life. Since the death of Louis the Fourteenth, 

 eastern literature has made rapid progress in France. To trace the various 

 causes of its interesting promotion, would lead me into a wild field of re- 

 search and disquisition. The information respecting the manners, and 

 customs, and literature of oriental nations, which the concluding years of 

 the eighteenth century, and the earlier part of the nineteenth, have brought 

 to light, can only be adequately appreciated by being compared]with the dim 

 and uncertain knowledge possessed by our immediate ancestors. An in- 

 crease of knowledge has been accompanied by a proportionate enlargement 

 of respect and attention on the part of the learned. The honours formerly, I 

 may say exclusively, conferred upon classical attainments, are now freely 

 imparted to the Persian and Arabic student. France has at the present 

 day a resident Savant in every district of the East, where an individual 

 language is spoken from China to India. The result of this intercourse is 

 the application, to a certain degree, of Eastern thought and imagery to 

 European literature ; and the Parisian ear now listens with pleasure to the 

 gorgeous metaphors and hyperboles of the poet, which Voltaire and the 

 virifamosi of the eighteenth century would have started from with horror. 

 Algernon Sydney. 



I have somewhere seen a very beautiful transcript of your Confession of 

 Faith. 



Victor Hugo. 



I suppose you allude to the preface to my Orientates. I had been 

 arguing (as it is my wont) upon the peculiar charms of romanticism, as 



