A GLANCE AT OUR PARISIAN CONTEMPORARIES. 4J9 



times want in softness and grace, he more than repays in freshness 

 and energy. His fame does not rest upon his poetry alone ; he has 

 tried and succeeded in several branches of literature, and we shall 

 accordingly pass his productions in review, considering him as a no- 

 velist, a dramatist, and a poet. 



To begin with his novels we have perused attentively his " Der- 

 nier Jour d'un Condamne," " Hans d'Icelande," " Notre Dame de 

 Paris," and one or two others, and we finished them with an impres- 

 sion that the author instead of being looked upon as the chief of the 

 " ecole romantique," might with greater propriety be considered the 

 founder of the " ecole horrible;" there is throughout such a striving 

 to excel in the portraiture of the horrible, such a frenzy to show poor 

 humanity in its most revolting shapes, merely to satisfy the vitiated 

 taste of the public. He is as cruel in his descriptions as the surgeon 

 would be who would dissect a man alive for no other purpose than to 

 show his auditory the horribly picturesque distortions of the poor 

 devil's limbs, and to regale their ears with each peculiar scream or 

 groan which the unhappy wretch might vent as the knife touched 

 some more than usually sensitive part of his devoted frame. This is 

 his great fault, and it is the fault of all his disciples and imitators 

 (and he has many), as every man of a truly original talent is sure to 

 have. The French are said to be a light and frivolous people, but 

 their present works of fiction most certainly do not bear the impress 

 of such a character. The writings of Hugo, Balzac, Dumas, and 

 others of the same description, would not continue to issue in such 

 shoals from the press if the public had not a relish for the highly sea- 

 soned messes which they contain. 



Another peculiarity which serves to distinguish Victor Hugo, is 

 the immense number of old words which he brings into circulatiou ; 

 he ransacks with all the rapture of an antiquary all the ancient ar- 

 chives, the old wills, and the musty documents which aged minsters 

 or rare black letter can supply ; and when he meets with a word which, 

 in his opinion, should not be suffered to fade into oblivion, he does not 

 hesitate in the least to rake it up from its grave and transfer it to his 

 own pages. For this we are very far from blaming him ; there are 

 good old expressive words in every language which we moderns, and 

 our more immediate progenitors have suffered to fall into disuse ; 

 some of them are gems and gold of a right good mintage, and the 

 writer who restores them to the place of honour, renders a service to 

 his language and its literature. There are several words in Chaucer 

 and Spenser which we would rejoice to see again in general circula- 

 tion, and we would think the country indebted to the writer who 

 should re-introduce them. But this, in the eyes of Messieurs de 

 1' Academic is one of Victor Hugo's greatest faults, and they accord- 

 ingly accuse him of deteriorating the French language ; we should 

 rather say that he improved it. This circumstance most probably 

 is the reason that he is so obscure to the majority of English readers,, 

 and is, moreover, the cause of his being so wretchedly translated. 



" Le dernier Jour d'un Condamne" enjoys as much popularity as 

 any of his novels, if novel it may be called. It is the anatomy of a 

 man's feelings on the day preceding that which must launch him into 



