impulse
in French literature was also immensely strengthened. The vocabulary of
prose widened at the same time as that of verse; and the prose of the
first Romantics remained almost completely rhetorical. But the realistic
elements always latent in prose--and especially in French prose--soon
asserted themselves; the vast opportunities for realistic description
which the enlarged vocabulary opened out were eagerly seized upon; and
it was not long before there arose in French literature a far more
elaborate and searching realism than it had ever known before.

* * * * *

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that the main struggle of the Romantic
controversy should have been centred in the theatre. The fact that this
was so is an instance of the singular interest in purely literary
questions which has so often been displayed by popular opinion in
France. The controversy was not simply an academic matter for
connoisseurs and critics to decide upon in private; it was fought out in
all the heat of popular excitement on the public stage. But the wild
enthusiasm aroused by the triumphs of Dumas and Hugo in the theatre
shows, in a no less striking light, the incapacity of contemporaries to
gauge the true significance of new tendencies in art. On the whole, the
dramatic achievement of the Romantic School was the least valuable part
of their work. _Hernani_, the first performance of which marked the
turning-point of the movement, is a piece of bombastic melodrama, full
of the stagiest clap-trap and the most turgid declamation. Victor Hugo
imagined when he wrote it that he was inspired by Shakespeare; if he was
inspired by anyone it was by Voltaire. His drama is the old drama of the
eighteenth century, repainted in picturesque colours; it resembles those
grotesque country-houses that our forefathers were so fond of, where the
sham-Gothic turrets and castellations ill conceal the stucco and the
pilasters of a former age. Of true character and true passion it has no
trace. The action, the incidents, the persons--all alike are dominated
by considerations of rhetoric, and of rhetoric alone. The rhetoric has,
indeed, this advantage over that of _Zaire_ and _Alzire_--it is bolder
and more highly coloured; but then it is also more pretentious. All the
worst tendencies of the Romantic Movement may be seen completely
displayed in the dramas of Victor Hugo.

For throughout his work that wonderful writer expressed in