Victor Hugo.

So the mighty master of romanticism is gone. As an infant, like Voltaire, he was so puny that they never expected him to live. Yet he outlasts Dumas, Sandeau, Buloz, Gautier, Janin, Lamartine, Carrel, Girardin, Balzac, George Sand, and his contemporaries in general, besides lights of the next generation, like Gambetta and About.

Which item, amid the massive work of Victor Hugo, floats to the surface in our mind? It is "The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame," with its old Paris, animated by such figures as Esmeralda, Quasimodo, Gringoire, Claude Frollo, and Captain Phœbus. Nôtre Dâme is Hugo's masterpiece. It excels anything by Scott. Next we would rank the play of "Marion de l'Orme," and third that of "Le Roi s'Amuse." "Hernani" and "Ruy Blas" come hard after. The volcanic genius of Hugo blazes throughout these plays like Byron's throughout his poetry. The lava, the ore, is in one molten mass. Hugo's other plays follow in a descending scale.

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His poetry, to our idea, ranks after his best plays. "Les Crépuscules" and "Les Feuilles d'Automne" are the only specimens of French poetry that attract us at all. Saving "Nôtre Dame," we do not admire his novels. The second best is "Les Travailleurs de la Mer." The overstrain in "Les Miserables" rushes to wild burlesque in "L'Homme Qui Rit."

His vast power is exercised in an unpleasant manner. The spirit outspoken in "Les Miserables" affords the key note of all he has written. In England, he influenced Dickens, Bulwer, and Ainsworth, but it is the tone of Dickens we relish, not that of Hugo. Nevertheless, "Nôtre Dâme" is the novel of this century. The finest scene in it is that where Frollo, in concealment, watches Phœbus making love to Esmeralda. Here the power is almost exactly similar to that exercised by George Sand, in the climax of "Indiana." "Zola" is in reality a development of Hugo, though styled antagonistic.

M. François Hugo's translation of Shakespeare surely bears the impress of Hugo. It came upon us like the refreshing discovery of another Shakespeare, to read such splendid translations as those of "Hamlet" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream." Students who are blase with Shakespeare should try to read him in French or German. But the spirit of the German language is so much like our own that it is in the more difficult French translation, perfectly done, that the sense of freshness captivates us most.

In these revolutionary times, men grow more democratic with age. Look at Gladstone. Garibaldi finished up as a Nihilist. Hugo ordered his body to be conveyed to the grave in the paupers' hearse—but then he left £200,000, the bulk invested in Perfide Albion, where Napoleon III. also made himself financially safe. How they are droll, these French! Poor Cobden lost all his savings in Free America.