822 



HTJGLI 



HUGO 



merits Stanley's life as a picture of the greatest of 

 modern teachers. It was followed in 1858 by The 

 Scouring of the White Horse ; in 1861 by Tom 

 Brown at Oxford, in which the mental history of 

 his hero is continued, with sketches of college life 

 and incidents ; and in 1869 by Alfred the Great. 

 Hughes pursued meanwhile the practice of the law, 

 became Q.C. in 1869, and a County Court judge in 

 1882. He associated early with Maurice and Kings- 

 ley in their work of social and sanitary reform among 

 the London poor, and while he had gained the con- 

 fidence and good-will of the working-classes by his 

 endeavours to promote a better understanding 

 between masters and men, and by teaching the 

 latter the value of co-operation, he has never failed 

 courageously to rebuke the narrow prejudices and 

 mischievous views held by certain members of 

 trades-unions. At the general election for Lam- 

 beth in 1865 he was placed at the head of the 

 poll. He was returned for Frome in 1868, which 

 he continued to represent till 1874, and always 

 took a prominent part in debates relating to trades- 

 unions and the like. In 1880 he assisted in found- 

 ing a settlement in the United States, described 

 in Rugby, Tennessee ( 1881 ). He also wrote Memoirs 

 of a Brother (1873), Lives of Daniel Macmillan 

 (1882) and Bishop Eraser (1887), Vacation Rambles 

 ( 1895), and the article MAURICE in this work. He 

 died 22d March 1896. 



Hligli. See HOOGHLY. /(^s, ,<*>' 



Hugo, VICTOR-MARIE (1802-85), was the son 

 of a Lorrainer and a Breton, and was born at 

 Besanon. His father. General Hugo, was on 

 active service, so that his earlier years were mostly 

 spent in the track of the emperor's armies. He 

 was educated partly in Paris at the Feuillantines 

 (1809-11, 1813 T 15), partly in Madrid (1812), and 

 partly at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he read 

 mathematics and- practised poetry. At fourteen 

 he produced a tragedy; at fifteen he went near 

 to winning a prize at an Academic competition ; 

 and at twenty, when he published hits lirst set 

 of Odi-x rf EaUadcs (1822), lie had thrice been 

 victor at the Floral Games of Toulouse. The 

 next year, being by this time a married man 

 and the enfant sublime of M. de Chateaubriand, 

 he published his Hans d'Islande (1823), that wild 

 and whirling romance of an impossible Iceland ; 

 and followed it up with Bjm-Jaraal (1824), a 

 second set of Odes et Ballades (18261. and the 

 famous Cromwetl ( 1827), thanks to which last 

 a tragedy even then impossible to act and now 

 almost as difficult to read ^ie became the most 

 conspicuous ..Jjgure in aesthetic France. .For Ro- 

 manticism -that protest" in action against the effete 

 andhidebound conventions of the age of Louis 

 XIV. was now by way of being an accomplished 

 fact ; and the preface to Cromwell was greeted 

 with an enthusiasm of approval on the one hand 

 and of detestation on the other in these days 

 not easy to understand. In its way, indeed, it 

 is a document of singular importance in literary 

 history. . It is largely compacted of paradox and 

 antithesis no doubt ; and no doubt its premises are 

 mostly dubious and its conclusions not more than 

 fantastic. But_it asserted the artist's right to be as 

 Shakespearian that is, as lawless as lie pleased, 

 and it was so completely a declaration of independ- 

 ence, and a decree of emancipation, that, whatever 

 happens, the literature of France can never wholly 

 recover from its effect. 



The time indeed was big with revolution and 

 with change, and Hugo's manifesto was accepted 

 by the Romanticists with the solemnity of absolute 

 conviction, so that he instantly took his place by 

 right of genius and authority at the head of the 

 literary host. He was fully equal to the charge 



of course ; for while he was fai and away the 

 greatest artist in words that modern France 

 luis seen, he was also very careful and curious in 

 the work of ' engineering a reputation,' and 

 contrived to take himself and nis function so 

 seriously that to his followers he was not much 

 below divinity itselfc It is said that he made 

 himself a forehead; and it is certain that while 

 M. Rodin's magnificent bust of him is far less 

 suggestive of Apollo than of Hercules, the Hugo 

 brow enormous, radiant, ' prone with excess of 

 mind ' appears and reappears in contemporary 

 caricature with all the persistency and more than 

 the effect of Gillray's view of the ' Bottomless Pitt. ' 

 It is certain, too, that the first sketch of his life 

 and work that got into print was written in his 

 own house, and was the work of his own wife ;. 

 and as Mme. Hugo never wrote again, it is legiti- 

 mate to argue that the hero may very possibly 

 have lent a hand to the epic. But he never 

 ceased from achievement ; and -his acliieypment 

 was inevjta.bly tb^f. nf ffreat artist in speech. 

 lii 1828 he published his Orientales, wherein he 

 revealed himself for such a master of rhythms, 

 such an inventor in style, such an adept in the 

 mystery of the use of words as France had never 

 seen. T!IP y par 1830 \vas the great year of Her- 

 nani the first in fact and the second in time of 

 those ' five-act lyrics ' of which Hugo's drama is 

 composed." In so far as it relates to drama 

 material, structure, amount, movement, the pre- 

 sentation of emotion in action tile question iTStl 

 been settled ^rimv and for all time by Dumas the 

 year before ; but Dumas was not a writer in the 

 sense that Hugo was, and the battle of style was 

 still to fight, and the battlefield was the Theatre- 

 Fran9ais, and the casus belli was Hernani. Iji |EL 

 so brilliantly written, the movement of the verse 

 is so victorious and the diction is 80 gorgeous, 

 that even now it takes one time and patience 

 and a certain familiarity to see that, while con- 

 structed in the formula of Henri Trois et sa Coui\ 

 it is no more a play than Samson Agonistes. 

 In those days men had neither time nor patience, 

 while as for familiarity ! ... It was enough that 

 to one side the verse was incomparable, and that 

 to another it was the Accursed Thing. As Hugo 

 took care to pack as much of the house as he could 

 get made over to him with Romantics, and as on 

 the other part the Classicists were to the full 

 as eager for the quarrel, the question of what is 

 and what is not style was argued for many nights. 

 on end with a vehemence sometimes attaining to 

 the inspiration of assault and battery which has 

 made 1830. as the year of Hernani, a^sacred date 

 as who ghpuldsay a species ^f_Hegira Jn_ the 

 annals of Romanticism. 



In 1831 Hugo~pu"blished Notre Dame de Paris, 

 a pretentious but picturesque and moving historical 

 romance in which he enters into competition with 

 Sir Walter and conies badly off, and Les Feuilles 

 d'Automne, a sheaf of lyric and contemplative 

 verse in which is included some of his best poetry ; 

 and brought out his best play, Marion Delorme, 

 at the Theatre-Fraricais. In 1832 he produced Le 

 Roi s'amuse, which was interdicted after the first 

 night, and of which the best that can be said is 

 that it is superbly written and that it has gone 

 the round of the world as Rigoletto. The next 

 year was that of Lucrece Borgia and Marie Tudor, 

 the first a good and stirring melodrama, the 

 second a farrago of unveracities of all kinds 

 moral, historical, dramatic, and the rest; in 1834 

 came Claude Gueux, which is pure humanitarian 

 sentimentalism, and the Litterature et Philosophic 

 Melees, a collection of juvenilia in prose, all care- 

 fully dated and all as carefully rewritten or 

 revised. Followed in 1835 Angelo, a third melo- 



