s which do not accept the
conditions proper to their kind.

The tragedy of _Torquemada_, strange in conception, wonderful--and
wonderfully unequal--in imaginative power, was an inspiration of
Hugo's period of exile, wrought into form in his latest years. The
dramas of the earlier period, opening with an historical play too
enormous for the stage, closed in 1843 with _Les Burgraves_, which
is an epic in dialogue. Aspiring to revolutionary freedom, the
romantic drama disdained the bounds of art; epic, lyric, tragedy,
comedy met and mingled, with a result too often chaotic. The desired
harmony of contraries was not attained. Past ages were to be revived
upon the stage. The historic evocation possessed too often neither
historic nor human truth; it consisted in "local colour," and local
colour meant a picturesque display of theatrical bric-a-brac. Yet
a drama requires some centre of unity. Failing of unity in coherent
action and well-studied character, can a centre be provided by some
philosophical or pseudo-philosophical idea? Victor Hugo, wealthy in
imagery, was not wealthy in original ideas; in grandiose prefaces
he attempted to exhibit his art as the embodiment of certain abstract
conceptions. A great poet is not necessarily a philosophical poet.
Hugo's interpretations of his own art are only evidence of the fact
that a writer's vanity can practise on his credulity.

Among the romantic poets the thinker was Vigny. But it is not by its
philosophical symbolism that his _Chatterton_ lives; it is by virtue
of its comparative strength of construction, by what is sincere in
its passion, what is genuine in its pathos, and by the character of
its heroine, Kitty Bell. In the instincts of a dramaturgist both Vigny
and Hugo fell far short of ALEXANDRE DUMAS (1803-70). Before the
battle of _Hernani_ he had unfolded the romantic banner in his _Henri
III. et sa Cour_ (1829); it dazzled by its theatrical inventions,
its striking situations, its ever-changing display of the stage
properties of historical romance. His _Antony_, of two years later,
parent of a numerous progeny, is a domestic tragedy of modern life,
exhaling Byronic passion, misanthropy, crime, with a bastard, a
seducer, a murderer for its hero, and for its ornaments all those
atrocities which fascinate a crowd whose nerves can bear to be
agreeably shattered. Something of abounding vitality, of tingling
energy, of impetuosity, of effrontery, secured a career for _Antony