The French Poets and Novelists. 531 



** Hence," as the author says in his preface, " the reader may account 

 for those tender couplets closed by others of complaint that calm- 

 ness touched with melancholy those sighs of delight that feeble- 

 ness suddenly reviving that resigned infelicity those profound sor- 

 rows which excite the very surface of the sea of poetry those 

 political tumults contemplated with serenity those holy wanderings 

 from public to domestic matters that dread of mundane affairs pro- 

 ceeding darkly, and then again those intervals of joyous and burning 

 hope that the human'species yet may nourish to excel." Pref. p. 2. 



Hugo's verses are harmonious ; but his sentiments are occasionally 

 common-place his meaning is often obscure, his similes frequently 

 feeble, and his satire robbed by mystification of half its point. On 

 the other hand, a pure patriotic feeling of national pride, a just idea 

 of political rights and liberties, a dread of absolute power, an admira- 

 tion of all that is virtuous, these are the principal merits of the author. 

 The conversations in the " Songs of Twilight," or " Chants du Cre- 

 puscule," conversations over which the scheme of poetic fiction, 

 hyperbole, and amplification, throws an essential interest, although 

 the realities of life and of mundane affairs be more attended to than 

 the serene sympathy and unison of feeling existing between a lover 

 and his mistress, conversations, where the plenitude of deep thought 

 is too frequently embarrassed with moralizing speculations and reli- 

 gious controversy but little suited to the schools of love ; those con- 

 versations are replete with beautiful imagery and brilliant metaphor. 



But we have already said sufficient on Victor Hugo's last work : 

 and now let us return to the abuse of the " Quarterly," still following 

 its criticisms on the same author. In that periodical we find c * Le 

 Dernier Jour d'un Condamne" vituperated : the reader will never 

 guess wherefore, simply because it is printed u in a diffuse style, 

 divided into many chapters; and each chapter is so short and so 

 carefully separated by blank leaves and open spaces, that of 312 pages, 

 of which the volume consists, there are but 158, or about one-half, of 

 letter-press." Now as the article in the " Quarterly" is intended to 

 be an attack on authors, and not on printers and publishers, we can- 

 not conceive an imagination so depraved as one that can invent a 

 sentence like that above quoted ; as if Victor Hugo attended to the 

 arrangements made by Monsieur Eugene Renduel, publisher, who 

 purchased the copyright. 



The fact is that " Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne'* is one of the 

 most useful books* lately published. Its principal aim is to deter 

 men from committing crimes of so black a nature as to endanger 

 their lives in the grasp of criminal justice, and by representing the 

 tortures of a condemned malefactor's mind as he draws nearer to- 

 wards the fatal day, M. Hugo hoped to work a favourable impression 

 on those individuals whose souls are deaf to the whisperings of virtue 

 and callous to the stings of conscience. Moreover the language is 

 fine, the ideas often grand in their conception, and the interest ex- 

 cited by the work unbroken, although there be no regularly con- 

 nected tale. 



4 ' 



_* This novel was published about ten years ago, ED. 



