530 The French Poets and Novelists. 



grand be the subject. We maintain that he has successfully com- 

 peted with the great Northern writer now no nrore ; we have seen 

 him throw round a low girl an obscure being that halo of all-ab- 

 sorbing interest which hitherto had been attached to queens or prin- 

 cesses, and which never may be forgotten by him who has read 

 " Notre Dame de Paris." But the age of romance has yielded to a 

 brighter one when facts are less darkened by the shadows of gloom, 

 of terror, and of mystery, which the votaries of the Maturin and the 

 Radcliffe schools, following the example of their German prede- 

 cessors, were delighted to mingle amongst the incidents of their tales. 

 Victor Hugo attempted to revive in part that exploded style, and to 

 introduce fresh horrors* to the world instead of the light, the witty, 

 and the captivating novels so successfully produced by some of his 

 cotemporary countrymen. As well might he have endeavoured to 

 propagate for any length of time the physics of Descartes or the 

 theories of Leibnitz. He failed and he stood, and he stands alone 

 as the patron of a school whose decay is not to be deplored. 



He has since flown to the other resources of his richly treasured 

 mind, like the bee vacillating from flower to flower whence he col- 

 lects the varied stores that are soon to become the delight of men. 

 But if he have not been so eminent in tragedy as the strength of his 

 former writings seemed to prognosticate, we may scarcely marvel ; 

 for thore is that same vein of romance, that soul-harrowing interest, 

 that " pleasing pain," that love of aught terrible, pervading his plays, 

 which originally marked his novels. Still the language of many pas- 

 sages in these plays is striking, powerful, affecting, or beautiful; let 

 us quote an instance. The sentence we would cite is in " Lucrece 

 Borgia" it is addressed by a son to his mother a son who is not 

 aware that he is speaking to his mother : 



" I know that I have a mother, and that she is unhappy ; and 

 willingly would I lay down my present life to see her weep, and all 

 my future hopes in another to see her smile." 



Sublimity, tenderness, hope, despair, passion, and energy, are all 

 combined in these few words ! 



Victor Hugo's last work is the " Songs of Twilight." We have 

 carefully perused this volume, and have reperused it with pleasure. 

 But the object of its contents is not to be understood by a superficial 

 reader, who, when he had arrived at the conclusion, would ask, 

 " Wherefore are they called * Chants du Crepuscule ?' " And many 

 might ask the same question, for " An Ode to the Heroes of the 29th 

 of July" another "To the Column in the Place Vendome" another 

 *' To the Duke of Orleans," and so on these seem totally uncon- 

 nected with the title of the book. But the title is explanatory of the 

 nature of the songs; for their object is to show how the present age 

 hovers so strangely between a state of barbarism and a state of civil- 

 ization how the mind of man and society in general are- so enveloped 

 in a species of enlightened gloom, doubt and conviction, hope and 

 fear, dread and callousness, knowledge and ignorance, freedom and 

 slavery, that the actual condition of the world resembles twilight. 



. _ 



* Witness " Bug Jargal" and " Hans d'Island." 



