Victor Hugo: His Life and Works Part 9

It may be here stated that the Pantheon was commenced in 1764 as a church, completed in 1790 as a Walhalla, was a church from 1822 to 1830, and again from 1851 until 1885. The interments in it of Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Marat are matters of history, as are also the expulsions which followed. Mirabeau's body was publicly expelled by the Terrorists; Marat's by the Anti-Terrorists; and Voltaire's and Rousseau's clandestinely by the Legitimists. In 1881 the last French Chamber pa.s.sed a Bill secularizing it; but this did not pa.s.s through the Senate.

Two days after the discussion upon M. de la Forge's motion, the _Journal Officiel_ published a series of doc.u.ments which summarily disposed of the matter. Ministers having advised President Grevy that an opportune moment had arrived for accomplis.h.i.+ng the wish expressed by the Chamber in 1881, and for restoring the building to its original destination as a burial-place for ill.u.s.trious Frenchmen, two Presidential Decrees were made, one declaring the Pantheon to be henceforth a mausoleum for great men who should have merited the grat.i.tude of the nation, and the other directing that the body of Victor Hugo should be laid there. In the Chamber an order of the day was proposed by the Comte de Mun, condemning the Presidential Decree as a provocation to Catholics and as an act of feebleness; but this was rejected by 388 to 83. Another motion expressing the Chamber's entire approval of the letter and spirit of the Decree was then submitted, and carried by 338 to 90. Hugo's family consented to the body being taken to the Pantheon, but insisted on its being carried in a pauper's hea.r.s.e from the Arc de Triomphe, where it was to lie in state, to the national mausoleum.

At six o'clock on the morning of the 31st of May the remains of the poet were transferred to the Arc de Triomphe, where waggon-loads of flowers and memorial wreaths had been constantly arriving. All the shops, cafes, and restaurants in the Avenue Victor Hugo, and near the Triumphal Arch, had remained open all night. 'There was nothing disorderly,' wrote a correspondent, 'and the impression everything gave was one of sadness, though all day the aspect of the Place de l'etoile had been really festive. The cenotaph was visible from the Tuileries.

The coffin was covered with a silver-spangled pall, which rose from a base covered with black and violet cloth, violet being regal mourning, and Victor Hugo having attained an intellectual and moral sovereignty over France.' Early in the day the crowds of human beings in all the avenues leading to the Place de l'etoile were very dense. As evening drew on the aspect was like that of some great fair. Medals bearing _Les Chatiments, Napoleon le Pet.i.t_, and other legends, were offered for sale, as well as medallions and numberless other memorials of the dead.

The display of flowers was wholly unparalleled. At night a flood of electric light poured upon the Place de l'etoile, revealing the coffin with Dalou's powerfully modelled bust at the foot, and bringing out the flowers and the names of Victor Hugo's works on s.h.i.+elds. The effect of the Horse Guards with torches and veiled lamps was very striking. Twelve schoolboys, relieved every hour, formed a picket in front of the cenotaph, round which there was an outer circle of juvenile guards, and an inner one of Hugo's intimate friends. English literature and the fine arts were worthily represented in the votive offerings laid at the feet of the great poet. Wreaths, flowers, and memorial cards were sent in great abundance. Lord Tennyson wrote under his name the word 'Homage,'

and at the top of his card, '_In Memoriam celeberrimi Poetae_.' Mr.

Browning also was represented, as well as Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy. Archdeacon Farrar sent the message, 'In honour of one who honoured man as man.' Sir F. Burton, director of the National Gallery, wrote, 'Honour to the memory of the great master;' and similar tributes were paid by many men of letters, poets, Royal Academicians, and others.

The funeral ceremony took place on the 1st of June, and it was of such a character as to live in the memory of all who witnessed it. What distinguished the procession in honour of Victor Hugo from the only one comparable with it, that of Gambetta, observed the correspondent of the _Times_, was not only its vast size, which was without precedent, but also the distinct sentiment which dominated both its members and the crowd. It was at once the triumph of the democracy and an ill.u.s.tration of its power. In the case of Gambetta, France beheld a statesman cut off in his prime, with all the dreams of hope and ambition before him. In the case of Victor Hugo, it was a veteran in letters entering into his rest. 'At the tidings of his death, all France, all parties, seemed to claim him; and it was the loss of the poet, the thinker, the humanitarian, which was first deplored. Then, by degrees, party claims were put forth. The poet and thinker disappeared, and this made his funeral less sublime. The crowd paid homage to the political weaknesses of his latter years, to the democratic philanthropist, to the Extremist Senator, to a Hugo, in fact, whom posterity will ignore, while honouring him with a place among great literary geniuses.' The struggle over his remains ended by other parties giving way, and the people for whom he had laboured claiming him as their especial champion and prophet. But certainly, whether for king, priest, statesman, or man of letters, Paris and the provinces never before turned out in such vast mult.i.tudes.

The wreaths arriving from all parts were placed on twelve cars, drawn by four or six horses each, and they formed a brilliant spectacle. Before six o'clock in the morning there were already four rows of spectators a.s.sembled on each side of the Champs elysees. 'The authorities, with considerable skill and foresight, had directed most of the societies likely to bear what might be qualified as seditious banners to meet in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Here accordingly, at a little before nine o'clock, were ma.s.sed various free-thought societies, nearly all of them bearing red flags or banners, from Boulogne, Asnieres, Argenteuil, Suresne, Bicetre, Sevres, Puteaux, and other places. Some of the banners were ornamented with Phrygian caps. Close by, in the Avenue de la Grande Armee, the proscripts of 1851-52 had also a red banner. By ten o'clock there were fifteen red flags close to the Arc de Triomphe. At the corner of the Rue Brunel M. Lissagaray, M. Martin, and some thirty well-known anarchists had responded to the call of the Revolutionary Committee.

They seemed, however, lost in the crowd. Twice this little group of anarchists tried to unfurl a red flag, but being so closely watched, they had not time to hoist the colour in the air before flag-bearer and flag were both captured. By half-past ten the anarchists, having already lost two flags, abandoned the Rue Brunel. A little before eleven o'clock a Commissioner of Police, in plain clothes, accompanied by half-a-dozen policemen and a company of Republican Guards, marched down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and, accosting the bearer of every red flag that seemed at all objectionable, lifted his hat, and demanded that the emblem should be covered over.' Although disturbances had been feared none occurred. The Red Republicans and anarchists (whom Victor Hugo had more than once condemned) were but as a drop in the bucket, compared with the myriads of other citizens a.s.sembled to do honour to the dead.

Although some arrests were made, the greatness of the whole occasion dwarfed their significance, and the most imposing spectacle within living memory became a veritable popular triumph, and one reflecting credit upon the French nation.

Vivid descriptions were penned of the ceremony. According to one of these, by eleven o'clock the sight at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe became more and more impressive. The dull, grey sky, the roll of the m.u.f.fled drums, the mournful strains of Chopin's _Funeral March_, combined with the hushed tones of conversation, helped to impress the numerous audience gathered round. The bright red robes of the judges and the sombre gowns of the barristers made a picturesque contrast with the very plain, unpretending dress of the members of the Government and of the Foreign Diplomatic Corps, who sat in the most favoured places at the foot of the Arc. In the background the glitter of cuira.s.sier armour and the gold braiding of the representatives of the army gave tone and vivacity to the scene. Much interest was manifested at the presence of the French Cabinet, of both Houses, and of the English Amba.s.sador, sitting side by side with M. de Mohrenheim, the Russian Amba.s.sador.

When the mourning family had taken their places, Ministers went to pay them their condolences. The funeral addresses were then delivered from a tribune erected on the left of the catafalque. The first speaker, M.

Le Royer, President of the Senate, described Victor Hugo as the most ill.u.s.trious senator, whose Olympian forehead, bowed on his breast in an antic.i.p.ated posture of immortality, always attracted respectful homage from all his colleagues. He never mounted the tribune but to support a cause always dear to him--the Amnesty. Amidst apparent hesitations, he had all his life consistently pursued a high ideal of justice and humanity, and his moral action on France was immense. He unmasked the sophisms of crowned crime, comforted weak hearts, and restored to honest men right notions of moral law, which had been momentarily obscured.

The speech of the day, however, was delivered by M. Floquet, President of the Chamber of Deputies. In tones which could be distinctly heard throughout the vast arena, and with much eloquence of gesture, the orator said: 'What can equal the grandeur of the spectacle before us, which history will record! Under this arch, constellated with the legendary names of so many heroes, who have made France free, and wished to render her glorious, we see to-day the mortal remains, or rather, I should say, the still serene image, of the great man who so long sang the glory of our country and struggled for her liberty. We see here around us the most eminent men in arts and sciences, the representatives of the French people, the delegates of our departments and communes, voluntary and spontaneous amba.s.sadors, and missionaries from the civilized universe, piously bending the knee before him who was a sovereign of thought, an exile for crushed right and a betrayed Republic, a persevering protector of all the weak and oppressed, and the chosen defender of humanity in our century. In the name of the nation we salute him, not in the humble att.i.tude of mourning, but with all the pride of glorification. This is not a funeral, but an apotheosis. We weep for the man who is gone, but we acclaim the imperishable apostle whose word remains with us, and, surviving from age to age, will conduct the world to the definite conquest of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

This immortal giant would have been ill at ease in the solitude and obscurity of subterranean crypts. We have elevated him there, exposed to the judgment of men and Nature, under the grand sun which illuminated his august conscience. Whole peoples realize the poetical dream of this sweet genius. May this coffin, covered with the flowers of the grateful inhabitants of Paris, which Victor Hugo loved to call the _Cite Mere_, and of which he was the respectful son and faithful servant, teach the admiring mult.i.tude duty, concord, and peace.'

M. Floquet concluded by reciting the verses beginning '_Je hais l'oppression d'une haine profonde_' ('I hate oppression with a profound hatred'). This address, which elicited enthusiastic approval, was followed by one from M. Goblet, Minister of Public Instruction. The Minister said that Victor Hugo, while living, figured in the glorious pleiad of great poets--with Corneille, Moliere, Racine, and Voltaire. He would always remain the highest personification of the nineteenth century, the history of which, with its contradictions, its doubts, its ideas, and aspirations, had been best reflected in his works. The speaker laid stress upon the profoundly human character of Victor Hugo, who represented in France the spirit of toleration and peace. M. emile Augier, who appeared in the uniform of the Academy, said: 'The great poet that France has lost vouchsafed me a place in his friends.h.i.+p.

Hence the honour I have to be chosen by the Academy to express our grief, which is as nothing to that of the whole nation. To the sovereign poet France renders sovereign honours. She is not prodigal of the surname Great. Hitherto it has been almost the exclusive appanage of conquerors; but one preceding poet was universally called the Great Corneille, and henceforth we shall say the Great Victor Hugo. His long-acquired renown is now called glory, and posterity commences. We are not celebrating a funeral, but a coronation.' M. Michelin, President of the Munic.i.p.al Council of Paris, delivered the last speech of the day.

On the conclusion of the addresses, the drums beat the salute, and then the band of the Republican Guard struck up the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_. Just as they had reached the chorus of the stirring French national anthem, the coffin was brought out from the catafalque, and at that precise moment the sun, bursting through the grey clouds, threw a ray of brilliant light on the mountain of flowers whence the remains of Victor Hugo had emerged. Now the march commenced, the school battalions and the representatives of the Press taking the lead, amid clapping of hands.

Chopin's _Marche Funebre_ was the music played at the opening of the ceremonial. After this came in slow movement the strains of the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, which were soon followed by the _Chant du Depart_, and then by the Girondins' celebrated chant, _Mourir pour la Patrie_.

Faithful to the stipulation of his will, Victor Hugo's body was conveyed to its last resting-place in the poor man's hea.r.s.e--that is to say, the cheapest hea.r.s.e which the Pompes Funebres provide. As the corpse was being removed from the cenotaph every head was uncovered. The artillery of the Invalides and of Mont Valerian boomed out a farewell salute. 'The procession,' wrote a correspondent of the _Daily News_, 'had for vanguard a squadron of mounted gendarmes, followed by General Saussier, the Governor of Paris, and the Cuira.s.siers, with band playing; twelve crown-laden cars, the band of the Republican Guard, the delegates of Besancon carrying a white crown, the French and foreign journalists, the Society of Dramatic Authors, and the delegates of the National and other theatres. The cars were surrounded by the children of the school battalion. There was no crown on the pauper's hea.r.s.e. The friends of the deceased held the cords of the pall, and Georges Hugo walked alone, behind. He was in evening dress, and looked a young man. His face is handsome, and his air distinguished. His mother, sister, and different ladies and other friends of the family walked at a short distance behind him. The crowd of people was astounding round the Arch of Triumph, and in the Champs elysees' side-ways the windows, balconies, house-roofs, and even the chimney-tops were crowded.'

The very trees seemed to bud with human beings; and the crowd of spectators in the streets was so deep and serried that it was impossible for any wearied senator, savant, or other venerable person to get out if once imprisoned. All along the route of the procession heads were religiously uncovered as the hea.r.s.e pa.s.sed. The school battalion guarded it, and then came many companies of boyish militia. Gymnastic societies in white, blue, and red flannel s.h.i.+rts, with white trousers, gaiters, and caps; delegations of the learned societies, political clubs, printers, publishers, newspapers, foreign Radicals, literati, philanthropical societies, fire brigades, humane societies, trades unions, came in processional order. Each group was distinctly separated from the other. Down the broad Champs elysees the procession moved with great facility, as all carriages had been cleared away before eight o'clock in the morning. All the available standing-room of the broad causeway was filled with an eager throng; but the most sublime sight was presented at the Place de la Concorde. The corner from the Champs elysees to the bridge was walled off by the troops, so that an innumerable mult.i.tude was able to collect at this point. Not content with this, the banks of the Seine, down to the water's edge, on both sides of the bridge, were thickly studded with people, and every floating barge or boat was dangerously loaded with spectators. Far up the broad stretch of the Avenue the procession, with its thousand crowns and banners, could be seen slowly descending. Many groups had not yet left the Arc de Triomphe when the head of the procession reached the Pantheon. A dense ma.s.s of spectators had gathered in and around the Place de la Concorde; but perhaps no portion of the route was so crowded as the Rue Soufflot, which leads from the Boulevard St. Michel to the Pantheon. Windows, ladders, roofs, and chimneys were all utilized by those eager to witness the pa.s.sing of the procession. Shortly after half-past one the head of the procession reached the steps of the Pantheon, and at two o'clock the coffin was brought up the front steps, and placed on the catafalque. The representatives of the family, of Government, and the various authorities took their places on either side of the main entrance. Once more a grand spectacle was offered by the artistic grouping of crowns, flowers, uniforms, and colours under the majestic pillars of the Pantheon. Speeches were again delivered, and these continued while the procession, with, bands and banners, filed past. The working-cla.s.s corporations followed in their various order, and these were succeeded by the Secular Technical School for Girls, the Republican Socialist Alliance, the Comedians of Paris, the Montmartre Choral Society, the Women's Suffrage Society, the Radical Socialist Club, and many other bodies. 'A few minutes after six o'clock,' remarked the _Times_ correspondent, 'the last crowns and banners pa.s.sed by, and after a short interval the troops representing the Army of Paris commenced their march-past. Dragoons, Republican Guard, and Line were in their turn acclaimed by the mult.i.tude, pleased by their martial appearance and their light tread after the fatigues of the day. Then came the blare of the Artillery trumpets, followed by those of the Dragoons, and at precisely a quarter to seven the last soldier made the last salute to the remains of Victor Hugo. A statue of Hugo in his famous posture of reverie fronted the Pantheon. This papier-mache statue represented Victor Hugo watching the long procession that did him honour. It was a trifle; but there was a touch of tender thoughtfulness in this reminder to the surging mult.i.tude that they must not forget the man who was being borne to the grave.'

Thus ended a funeral pageant worthy, on the whole, of the poet and the nation--a pageant in which were to be found representatives of all cla.s.ses of the French community. Victor Hugo, whose genius recalled the elder glory of French literature, now sleeps in the Pantheon. While he differed from the ill.u.s.trious men of the past, having neither the wit of Rabelais nor Moliere, the cla.s.sic dignity of Corneille, nor the philosophic depth of Voltaire, he had a greatness, though of a different kind, equal to their own. He therefore joins them as an equal.

He has given to French literature a new departure; for every book he has written, while wet with human tears, is yet stamped with the terrible earnestness which possessed his spirit, and made immutable by the Herculean strength of his genius.

CHAPTER XXI.

GENIUS AND CHARACTERISTICS.

Victor Hugo, though simple in nature, was many-sided in intellect. As I approach the conclusion of my task, I feel how truly great the sum of this man's work was, notwithstanding the flaws which disfigured it. And in proportion to its greatness is the difficulty of appraising, or even of approximately appraising, its value. This task belongs to a writer or writers yet unborn; for neither in his own nor even in the next generation does such a man of genius as Hugo--an author _sui generis_, one utterly unlike all others--a.s.sume his distinctive niche in the Walhalla of literature. But there are some suggestions of a general character which may be offered respecting his work, and these will naturally fall under four headings--political, social, moral or religious, and literary.

It has been said that Hugo failed in politics; but as he never posed for being a practical politician, the charge does not possess the significance that would have attached to it had he come forward as a political saviour--of whom France has had so many. For the sinuosities and compromises of party politics, however wise and necessary at times, he had no apt.i.tude. He had no political creed; or, if he had, it might be summed up in one article. He individualized humanity, and declared it to be miserable. The whole of his creed, therefore, consisted in the destruction of monopolies and abuses, and the uplifting of the ma.s.ses.

But he was certainly unfitted for the debates of such a body as the French Chamber, and it was probably one of the best things he ever did in his life when he shook the dust from under his feet, and bade the a.s.sembly an indignant farewell. Yet he was more successful than scores of other politicians who have set up a claim to superior political wisdom. The French Chamber has been too frequently suggestive of a _maison d'alienes_. The modern Gallic politician is about the most impulsive creature of which we have any knowledge. He lacks the phlegmatic nature of the German and the logical hardheadedness of the Briton. He is hypersensitive and emotional, not argumentative and judicial. He only knows that he has ideas, and that every man who opposes those ideas is an enemy of the human species, and must be put out of the way. This was proved again and again in that terrible year of Revolution, 1793, when the friends of Reason sent each other to the block as they successively gained the upper hand. One would think that this was a sufficient baptism of blood; but it was not so; the tale has been renewed at intervals, and the communistic horrors of 1871 added another fearful page to the grim catalogue. French politics are a succession of storms; the lightning breaks, the thunder rolls, and the deluge follows; then, for a time, the sky clears and the sun s.h.i.+nes brilliantly: but the clouds return after the rain; the barometer becomes demoralized; and electrical disturbance is once more the order of the day.

But in the intervals of sanity in the French political world--I use the word 'sanity' in its larger sense--great and n.o.ble work is done, work worthy of the world's admiration. When the French mind conceives projects of amelioration, it conceives them with boldness and generosity. In this lies the safety-valve of the people, and also the best hope for the future of the race. Men like Hugo are the men to suggest and to push forward these great conceptions for the national welfare. They may have few political principles as such, but the political sympathies of such a man as Victor Hugo have more force and weight than the most orthodox and irreproachable doctrines of a hundred smaller men. While politicians may be struggling for unimportant details, men of great sympathies are mighty to the moving of mountains.

As a practical politician, then, let it be frankly admitted that Hugo was a failure; that in his speeches he was frequently rhapsodical; and that he could take no initiative in practical legislation. All these are matters in which lesser intellects might, could, should, would, and do succeed. But in that higher region where the eternal principles of justice come into play, where sublime benevolence holds her seat, where by a quick and living sympathy universal humanity is made to feel a universal brotherhood, then Victor Hugo had a political illumination to which none other of his contemporaries could lay claim.

From the political to the social is but a step, and that a natural one.

It cannot be said of Hugo that he was liberal in his social theories and aristocratic in his practice. He had a courteousness of nature that made him equally esteemed, and had in reverence, by such an one as a king or an emperor, and the meanest of his compatriots who called upon him for advice or aid. If he endeavoured to teach the higher social life to others, he at least led the way by setting before himself only such aims as were n.o.ble and humane. He was the very soul of truth in all his relations, and if he were not the equal of Rousseau as a great social teacher, he far transcended the author of the _Contrat Social_ in his irreproachable life and his deep personal sympathies. One writer has said that 'Victor Hugo's own strongest influence is but a breath of the influence of Rousseau.' This is a deliverance as unhappy as it is dogmatic. There is neither necessity nor appositeness in placing the two writers in such juxtaposition. France before Rousseau was not the France of Victor Hugo; the former had work of an originative character to do in the social sphere, as Victor Hugo had in that of literature. But while Hugo was not the creator of a new social system, one of the primary causes of his influence was of a social character. His intense and genuine sympathy with the humble and the poor and the suffering gave him a place in the affection of thousands who knew little of social theories. The key, indeed, to Hugo's personal character and influence, as distinguished from the literary, was that human sympathy which led to his untiring efforts to protect the weak against the strong. He would have no parleying with oppression and violence, and notwithstanding his pa.s.sionateness he really exercised a salutary and calming influence in the main, and one which told for goodness. To him the orphan's rags, the shame of woman, and the anguish of the toiler never appealed in vain. I can imagine him doing what st.u.r.dy old Samuel Johnson did when he rescued the outcast woman in the Strand, and himself bore her away to a place of safety. Hugo had a clear enough insight into those social reforms which are still a necessity even in this enlightened age. He did not believe in the perfection of the poor, though he did believe in the absolute imperfection of kings and priests. By setting the latter in the full blaze of publicity, he believed he was doing a great social work, and helping on that golden age of happiness for which he laboured. In his earnestness and enthusiasm, he might commit, and doubtless did commit, errors of judgment; but then without these very qualities of earnestness and enthusiasm all the great things a.s.sociated with his name could have had no birth. Where we gain much, we can easily forgive a little. Victor Hugo had a conscience, and as a man amongst men, pleading for men, he threw it all into his social work. In Jean Valjean he will never cease to plead, though he himself is dead. He has given to the sufferings of humanity a voice which will continue to speak in tones of pathos and of sadness until the last of those sufferings and social wrongs shall have pa.s.sed away. Of many devastating spirits has the world been called upon to say that they made a solitude and called it peace; but of Victor Hugo we may say that he found humanity a bleak and cheerless wilderness, and endeavoured to make it blossom as the rose.

Yet loving the world and humanity as he did, and feeling that the earth was 'bound by gold chains about the feet of G.o.d,' Hugo, as I have before said, has been claimed by some as an unbeliever. As though any great poet who had come to years of discretion could be a materialist or an infidel. So far from seeing no G.o.d in the universe, the poet as a rule is G.o.d-intoxicated. I shall be reminded, perhaps, of Lucretius and Sh.e.l.ley, but even these, as the exceptions, would only serve to prove the rule. The Roman, however, was philosopher first, and poet afterwards; while as for the atheism of Sh.e.l.ley, it was a spasmodic experience due to a revolt against authority--not a deep-settled conviction--and an experience out of which he was rapidly growing at the time of his death. No poet of the first order has ever been an atheist, and Victor Hugo was no exception to the rule. While discarding religious systems, he was, in fact, profoundly religious. He never swerved in this matter from the position he held in 1850, and which he thus explained at the close of a speech on public instruction, 'G.o.d will be found at the end of all. Let us not forget Him; and let us teach Him to all. There would otherwise be no dignity in living, and it would be better to die entirely. What soothes suffering, what sanctifies labour, what makes man good, strong, wise, patient, benevolent, just, and at the same time humble and great, worthy of liberty, is to have before him the perpetual vision of a better world throwing its rays through the darkness of this life. As regards myself, I believe profoundly in this better world, and I declare it in this place to be the supreme certainty of my soul. I wish, then, sincerely, or, to speak more strongly, I wish ardently for religious instruction.' There is surely nothing vague or nebulous about this. No man could express himself more clearly or emphatically if directly questioned upon the great and momentous topics of G.o.d and immortality. As a religious teacher, then, Hugo may be justly claimed; for the whole weight of his name and influence was thrown upon the side of those profound religious convictions which have been the consolation of the human race, and which have knit man in indissoluble bonds to the Divine.

What shall I say of Victor Hugo from the literary point of view? His true glory is that he revivified French literature--created it afresh, as it were--and was himself the best representative of its new excellences. But this subject is so great that I scarcely dare venture upon it. The poet carried out in his own person and work the advice he once gave to some younger spirits, 'Act so that your conscience will approve, and your works praise you; and, like those great unknown, you will leave the world better than you found it; while, in virtue of the justice which I believe to be the law of the universe, you will rise high elsewhere in the scale of creation. A man is splendidly praised when he is praised by his works.' Of course, he had his detractors--such men as Charles Maurice, who believed himself to be a greater writer than Victor Hugo, and who only perceived in _Hernani_ the effects of 'an intolerable system of style destructive of all poesy.' The world has since regulated this matter adversely to Maurice. Then there were others not so unjust as this writer, but men who were so strongly impressed by the defects of Hugo that they scarcely gave him due credit for his manifest powers of literary expression. Heine and Amiel may be taken to represent this type. To set against these are the Hugolatres, as Theophile Gautier called them. In England the most enthusiastic admirer of the poet is undoubtedly Mr. Swinburne, and from his numerous tributes I may select one pa.s.sage that is a kind of triumphant summary of the rest. It is the last stanza from his New-Year Ode to Hugo, in the _Midsummer Holiday, and other Poems_:

'Life, everlasting while the worlds endure, Death, self-abased before a power more high, Shall bear one witness, and their word stand sure, That not till time be dead shall this man die.

Love, like a bird, comes loyal to his lure; Fame flies before him, wingless else to fly.

A child's heart toward his kind is not more pure, An eagle's toward the sun no lordlier eye.

Awe sweet as love and proud As fame, though hushed and bowed, Yearns toward him silent as his face goes by; All crowns before his crown Triumphantly bow down, For pride that one more great than all draws nigh: All souls applaud, all hearts acclaim, One heart benign, one soul supreme, one conquering name.'

Making allowance for the fervour which a peculiarly fervid singer throws into his admiration, there is much truth in this metrical tribute to the literary and personal worth of the great poet. Substantially the same high view of Hugo is held by Lord Tennyson and other literary men in this country. But, with regard to criticism in particular, the writer from whom I have just quoted was even happier still in his prose comparisons. He remarked in his essay on _La Legende des Siecles_ that 'Hugo, for all his dramatic and narrative mastery of effect, will always probably remind men rather of such poets as Dante or Isaiah than of such poets as Sophocles or Shakspeare. We cannot, of course, imagine the Florentine or the Hebrew endowed with his infinite variety of sympathies, of interests, and of powers; but as little can we imagine in the Athenian such height and depth of pa.s.sion, in the Englishman such unquenchable and sleepless fire of moral and prophetic faith. And hardly in any one of these, though Shakspeare perhaps may be excepted, can we recognise the same buoyant and childlike exultation in such things as are the delight of a high-hearted child--in free glory of adventure and ideal daring, in the triumph and rapture of reinless imagination, which gives now and then some excess of G.o.dlike empire and superhuman kins.h.i.+p to their hands whom his hands have created, and the lips whose life is breathed into them from his own.' And again, 'In his love of light and freedom, reason and justice, he not of Jerusalem, but of Athens; but in the bent of his imagination, in the form and colour of his dreams, in the scope and sweep of his wide-winged spiritual flight, he is nearer akin to the great insurgent prophets of deliverance and restoration than to any poet of Athens, except only their kinsman aeschylus.' Even the most superficial reading of Hugo must leave an impression of magnificent powers, of powers which in given circ.u.mstances might have produced many and different forms of greatness. He had that exaltation of the intellect and imagination, that lofty range of mental force, which moulds centuries and moves the world.

But there are special literary qualities in Hugo which should be noticed. First among them is his extreme conscientiousness. His natural eloquence has sometimes been regarded as a snare to him, and yet in all the details of his work he was rigidly exact, so far as the most minute search could enable him to be. This was apparent in _Notre-Dame_, and especially so in _Les Miserables_, where he devoted a volume to a description of the battle of Waterloo, or Mont St. Jean, as the French designate it. Before writing on this, he lived for some time in the vicinity of the scene, and closely noted every item in connection with the fight on that great battlefield. He wrote to a correspondent, 'I have studied Waterloo profoundly; I am the only historian who has pa.s.sed two months on the field of battle.' This same feeling of conscientiousness he also carried into other matters.

Another point which must be borne in mind in endeavouring to get at the source of Victor Hugo's influence upon literature is the extent and flexibility of his vocabulary. 'No one,' wrote M. Edmond About, shortly after the appearance of _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, 'can fail to recognise the power of Hugo's invention, the wealth of his ideas, the grandeur of his oratorical flights, and that sublimity which is the mark of a man of genius; but it is not known in Europe, nor even in France, that Victor Hugo is the most learned of men of letters. He possesses an enormous vocabulary. Out of the 27,000 words which the dictionary of the Academy contains, and 6,000 of which have an individuality of their own, the language of common life employs at most about a thousand. I could mention ill.u.s.trious publicists, popular dramatists, novelists, whose books are much read and much liked, none of whom has more than 1,500 words at his disposal. Theophile Gautier, a studious man and a dilettante, used to boast to his friends of possessing 3,000. "But," he used to add, "I might toil to the last day of my life without attaining to the vocabulary of Hugo." Genius apart, merely by his knowledge and use of his mother-tongue, Hugo is the Rabelais of modern days. This is the minor side of his glory, I allow; but critics ought not to neglect it, or they will lead people to form false ideas.'

As to Hugo's human pa.s.sion, it agonizes in almost every page of his writings. He is nothing if not intensely human. And his weird and powerful effects are heightened by that undertone, that minor chord of music which he touches more often than the more jubilant major notes.

'The still sad music of humanity' is for ever beating in his ear, and he translates its moving pathos into words. A mind of this stamp feels that it can rarely turn to the humorous, and accordingly it is objected that he has no sense of humour. The charge is true in the main, for the grim humour of some of his situations may be better expressed by the epithet of grotesque. He lacked just this saving sense of humour to place him on a level with the greatest writers--or rather with those writers who are greatest in the delineation of human nature and its pa.s.sions; for we have great writers, such as Dante and Milton, who are equal strangers with Hugo to the humour which plays about the pages of Shakspeare.

But Hugo is pre-eminent in other qualities. He is firmly and uncompromisingly veracious. No special correspondent who ever described a battlefield could be more vivid and telling in his reminiscences.

There is the stamp of reality and truthfulness upon all that he has written. With a gloomy magnificence of imagery he has described scenes and events that are now immortal in literature. There is a grand spontaneity in his utterances--an eloquence that springs from the heart as much as from the head; while over all his poems and romances a n.o.ble halo has been thrown which is the reflex of the innate n.o.bility of the man.

M. emile Montegut has observed that Hugo is master of all that is colossal and fearful. His imagination prefers sublime and terrible spectacles: war, s.h.i.+pwreck, death, and primitive civilizations, with their babels and convulsions--these attract him. How well, also, can he imitate the plaintive cries of the ocean under the tempest which torments it! Let him but paint a feudal ruin and you will be made to feel all its imposing horrors; or a palace of Babylon, and you will realize its ma.s.sive splendours. He knows the secrets of the Sphinx, and of the monstrous idols; he is familiar with the burning deserts of Africa, and the horrors of hyperborean countries. In the domain of the weird he is sovereign king, and no one will dispute with him. In other fields he may have rivals, but in the region where the fantastic mingles with the superhuman he has no equal.

But there is yet another side to Hugo which English critics have been just to note--it is that concerned with his human creations. While he may revel in the scenes which M. Montegut depicts, his heart is mostly in his human creations. And with regard to his treatment of these, it has been observed that the spectator is put outside the scene, and can do nothing but look on breathless, while amid mist and cloud, with illuminations fiery or genial, as the case may be, the great picture rises before him, each actor detached and separate, some in boldest relief, with a force which is often tremendous, and always forcibly dramatic. The giant and the child are treated with equal care and conscientiousness. Though first in ma.s.sive effects, in deep broad lines, Hugo is also first in the most delicate shades of tenderness. 'The babes are as distinct as the heroes, every pearly curve of them tender and sweet as rose-leaves, yet complete creatures, nowhere blurred or indefinite, even in the most delicious softness of execution.' I quote from a writer in _Blackwood_, who had the candour (not always displayed by critics) to acknowledge that neither in France nor upon our own side of the Channel is there a contemporary writer who can with any show of justice be placed by the side of Victor Hugo. 'His genius is too national, his workmans.h.i.+p too characteristic, to be contrasted with the calmer inspiration of any Englishman.... His subject, the character he is unfolding, possesses the writer: he throws himself upon it with a glow and fervour of knowledge, with a certainty of delineation which is not the mere exercise of practised powers, but with that something indescribable, something indefinable, added to it, swelling in every line, and transforming every paragraph. The workmans.h.i.+p is often wonderful; but it is not the workmans.h.i.+p which strikes us most--it is the abundant, often wild, sometimes unguided and undisciplined touch of genius which inspires and expands and exaggerates and dilates the words it is constrained to make use of--almost forcing a new meaning upon them by way of fiery compulsion, to blazon its own meaning upon brain and sense, whether they will or not. We know no literary work of the age--we had almost said no intellectual work of any kind--so possessed and quivering with this indescribable but extraordinary power.'

Hugo's works are undoubtedly in parts eccentric, and all too frequently extravagant; but this is the nodding of Homer. His conceptions are gigantic, and his figures truly dramatic; and these are the chief things with which we have to do. In his superb excellences he stands alone--he is unique. His table is weighted with intellectual sustenance; so great is his abundance that a myriad writers could be fed from the crumbs which fall from his table. From the literary point of view we must not forget his chief distinction--that he effected the most brilliant and complete revolution that has been witnessed in the history of French literature. He changed the whole face of art in French poetry, and destroyed for ever the poetry of conventionality. He has endowed his native language with new nerve and sensibility; he has given it a fresh and vital force, and the effects of his influence upon the nation and literature of which he was the brightest ornament must be radical and abiding.

One quality only, or so it seems to me, Hugo lacked to place him on a level with the few great master spirits of the world. He wanted the universality of Homer and Shakspeare. Whenever the _Iliad_ is read, the power of that mighty story is felt, and methinks that had I been born of any other than that English nationality of which I can boast, there is still something in Shakspeare which would have moved me as no other writer does. It is that secret power which draws all hearts to him--'that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin,' and unites all men in admiration of his singular genius. Hugo is great also, but he has not that Shakspearean greatness which compels the tribute of all other peoples, as it receives the willing homage of his own. His n.o.ble poems and romances, with their sonorous eloquence, their rapid changes, their varied effects, remind me of Nature on an autumn day. The gloomy cloud gathers in the heavens, the lurid lightning darts from its bosom, the thunder rolls and reverberates in the mountains; but anon the tempest pa.s.ses, the heavens open, and the glorious and beneficent sun once more smiles upon the world. So Hugo is a mixture of thunder and suns.h.i.+ne; of smiles and tears. No man had ever a greater heart--Shakspeare, and few others only, a more expansive intellect. He lacks the grand impartiality and the majestic calm of the author of _Hamlet_; but his soul is filled with the same love of his species, and it is large enough to embrace all the sons of humanity. His is a name which any nation, might well hold in everlasting honour. Though his life be ended, the splendour of his fame has but just begun; for the works infused and moulded by his genius, and into which he threw so much of pa.s.sionate energy, of a n.o.ble idealism, of radiant hope, of moral fervour, and of human sympathy, will a.s.suredly confer upon him glory and immortality.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.