A MALFORMED GIANT 181 



Man who Laughs " is tremendous. Only the first 

 order of minds can conjure up such material and 

 deal with such a motif. It is like the granite rock. 

 But oh the absurdities and anachronisms in the 

 working of it up! "The Toilers," too, faces reali- 

 ties of the largest kind, but there are things in it 

 which, as Robert Louis Stevenson well says, simply 

 make the reader cover his face with his hands, the 

 artistic falsehoods are so glaring. The description 

 of the storm which overtakes Gilliat just as his task 

 is about finished resembles the work of the great 

 artists about as nearly as a nightmare resembles the 

 reality. Yet in all these romances everything is 

 large, elemental; no hair-splitting, nothing petty 

 or over-refined. It is the work of a giant, but one 

 malformed. Hugo at once strikes a louder, stronger 

 key than any of his contemporaries. His voice 

 rises above all others, and is as full of cheer and 

 hope as it is full of denunciation and wrath. He 

 was like dynamite and giant powder, which make 

 themselves heard and felt afar. He had no repose, 

 and this is one reason why he is so irritating to the 

 English mind. Another reason is his want of self- 

 restraint. As a literary artist he out-Herods Herod. 

 In the torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of his passion, 

 all goes by the board. "The modesty of nature," 

 which Hamlet laid such stress upon in his address 

 to the players, is not only "o'erstepped," it is out- 

 rageously insulted. Probably never before in the 

 history of literature has a master spirit cut such 

 fantastic tricks before the high heaven of literary art. 



