IDEA OF LAW IX POETEY <i ( J7 



and however restricted the perception of harmony, both adapted them- 

 selves to an irresistible tendency of things in the development of 

 French society. The great error of the Eomanticists was that they 

 ignored the existence of this historic law. As a revolt in the sphere 

 of art and imagination their movement was fully justified, and noth- 

 ing would have been easier for them than to show that a law of taste, 

 which might have been suitable for the times of Louis XIV., was 

 quite unsuitable for the times of Charles X. 



What the Boinanticists wanted, however, was not a revolt but a 

 Eevolution. The rules, distinctions, practices, and traditions, which 

 had been the result of so much ingenious thought and labor, were to be 

 swept away, and Poetry was to find for herself a basis in first prin- 

 ciples, supposed to be entirely modern. What were they ? The mani- 

 festo of the victorious Eomanticists is to be found in the Preface to 

 Victor Hugo's Cromwdt, which founds its reasoning on this colossal 

 generalization : '' To sum up the facts we have just observed, Poetry 

 has three Ages, each of which corresponds with an epoch of society : 

 Ode, Epic, Drama. Primitive times are lyric, ancient times are epic, 

 modern times are dramatic. The Ode sings eternity; the Epic sol- 

 emnizes history; the Drama paints life. The character of the first 

 kind of poetry is naivete; the character of the second simplicity; the 

 character of the third truth. The rhapsodists mark the transition of 

 the lyric poets to the epic poets, as the romance-writers from the epic 

 poets to the dramatic poets. Historians arise in the second epoch; 

 chroniclers and critics in the third. The personages of the Ode are 

 Colossi: Adam, Cain, Xoah ; those of the Epic are giants: Achilles, 

 Atreus, Orestes; those of the Drama are men : Hamlet, Macbeth. 

 Othello. The Ode derives its life from the ideal, the Epic from the 

 grandiose, the Drama from the real. In a word, this threefold Poetry 

 springs from three groat sources the Bible, Homer. Shakespeare." 



The upshot of this reasoning is, that the end of the modern or 

 romantic drama is to paint real character, and A'ietor Hugo tells us 

 very naively how this was done in the case of Cromwell. He had for 

 a long time accepted the portrait of the regicide, painted by F>ossuet, 

 as true to life; but, happening to come across an old document of the 

 seventeenth century, he discovered that the portrait did not resemble 

 the original. The idea must therefore be corrected, and the proper place 

 for correcting it was the Drama. Accordingly he road a vast number 

 of book*:, from which ho generalized the character of the man and 

 his times. chose a dramatic moment in the life of his hero which 

 would enable him to exhibit hi? real motive- to the reader, surrounded 

 him with more than sixty other dr<nnatix pcrsonac, and finally com- 

 pleted the portrait of the character in a play which extended it-elf to 

 about 1 '2.00() linos. It seems, indeed, to have struck Victor Hugo that 

 there was something paradoxical in the fact that a composition founded 



