184 INDOOR STUDIES 



of nature, to be great in any presence, is to stand 

 firmly on your feet, to use all gently, and in the 

 very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirl- 

 wind of your passion, acquire and beget a temper- 

 ance that will give it smoothness. In the case of 

 Victor Hugo, when the pressure of his passion 

 mounts to a certain pitch, he invariably flies from 

 his orbit and from being planetary, as jEschylus 

 and Shakespeare always are, becomes cometary and 

 lawless, losing fervor in fury and reason in riot. 

 He would have every storm a cyclone, every fish a 

 monster, every clown a gnome, a medusa; and if 

 they are not so it is not his fault. He "pushes 

 the passions till the bond of nature snaps and all 

 the furies come screeching in." Let me explain 

 myself further. Close alongside of the sphere of 

 the normal lies the sphere of the abnormal; of the 

 sane, lies the insane; of pleasure, lies disgust; of 

 cohesion, lies dissolution; of the grotesque, lies the 

 hideous; of the sublime, lies the ridiculous; of 

 power, lies plethora; of sense, lies twaddle, etc. 

 Take but a step sometimes and you pass from one 

 to the other, from a shout to a scream, from the 

 heroic to the vainglorious. Victor Hugo, iu his 

 imaginative flights, is forever hovering about this 

 dividing line, fascinated, spellbound by what lies 

 beyond, and in his Teachings after it outraging the 

 "modesty of nature" till the very soul blushes. It 

 would seem as if he loved the unnatural simply 

 because it is the unnatural, and the malformed sim- 

 ply because it is the malformed. He loves to push 



