f sound have passed away, the idea remains. In fragments
from his papers, published in 1867, with the title _Journal d'un
Poete_, the inner history of Vigny's spirit can be traced.

IV

To present VICTOR HUGO in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a
cherry-stone. His work dominates half a century. In the years of exile
he began a new and greater career. During the closing ten years his
powers had waned, but still they were extraordinary. Even with death
he did not retire; posthumous publications astonished and perhaps
fatigued the world.

Victor-Marie Hugo was born at Besancon on February 26, 1802, son of
a distinguished military officer--

"_Mon pere vieux soldat, ma mere Vendeenne._"

Mother and children followed Commandant Hugo to Italy in 1807; in
Spain they halted at Ernani and at Torquemada--names remembered by
the poet; at Madrid a Spanish Quasimodo, their school servant, alarmed
the brothers Eugene and Victor. A schoolboy in Paris, Victor Hugo
rhymed his chivalric epic, his tragedy, his melodrama--"les betises
que je faisais avant ma naissance." In 1816 he wrote in his manuscript
book the words, "I wish to be Chateaubriand or nothing." At fifteen
he was the laureate of the Jeux Floraux, the "enfant sublime" of
Chateaubriand's or of Soumet's praise.

Founder, with his brothers, of the _Conservateur Litteraire_, he
entered into the society of those young aspirants who hoped to renew
the literature of France. In 1822 he published his _Odes et Poesies
Diverses_, and, obtaining a pension from Louis XVIII., he married
his early playfellow Adele Foucher. Romances, lyrics, dramas
followed in swift succession. Hugo, by virtue of his genius, his
domineering temper, his incessant activity, became the acknowledged
leader of the romantic school. In 1841 he was a member of the Academy;
four years later he was created a peer. Elected deputy of Paris in
1848, the year of revolution, he sat on the Right in the Constituant,
on the Left in the Legislative Assembly, tending more and more towards
socialistic democracy. The Empire drove him into exile--exile first
at Brussels, then in Jersey, finally in Guernsey, where Hugo, in his
own imagination, was the martyred but unsubdued demi-god on his
sea-beaten rock. In 1870, on the fall of the Empire, he returned to
Paris, witnessed the siege, was elected to the National Assembly,
urged a continuance of the war, spoke in favour of recognising
Garibaldi's election, and being