The professors of rhetoric were thunderstruck by the audacity of
Racine, who in the 'Dream of Athalie' had spoken of dogs as dogs--molossi
would have been better--and they advised young poets not to imitate this
license of genius. Accordingly the first poet who wrote bell (_cloche_)
committed an enormity; he exposed himself to the risk of being cut by his
friends and excluded from society." [17]

As to the alexandrine, the recognised verse of French tragedy, Victor
Hugo tells us,[18] that many of the reformers, wearied by its monotony,
advocated the writing of plays in prose. He makes a plea, however, for
the retention of the alexandrine, giving it greater richness and
suppleness by the displacement of the caesura, and the free use of
_enjambement_ or run-over lines; just as Leigh Hunt and Keats broke up
the couplets of Pope into a freer and looser form of verse. "Hernani"
opened with an _enjambement_

"Serait ce deja lui? C'est bien a l'escalier
Derobe."

This was a signal of fight--a challenge to the classicists--and the
battle began at once, with the very first lines of the play.[19] In his
dramas Hugo used the alexandrine, but in his lyric poems, his wonderful
resources as a metrist were exhibited to the utmost in the invention of
the most bizarre, eccentric, and original verse forms. An example of
this is the poem entitled "The Djinns" included in "Les Orientales"
(1829). The coming and going of the flying cohort of spirits is
indicated by the crescendo effect of the verse, beginning with a stanza
in lines of two syllables, rising gradually to the middle stanza of the
poem in lines of ten syllables, and then dying away by exactly graded
diminutions to the final stanza:

"On doute
La nuit--
J'ecoute
Tout fuit,
Tout passe:
L'espace
Efface
Le bruit." [20]

But the earlier volume of "Odes et Ballades" (1826) offers many instances
of metrical experiments hardly less ingenious. In "La Chasse du
Burgrave" every rime is followed by an echo word, alike in sound but
different in sense:

"Il part, et Madame Isabelle,
Belle,
Dit gaiement du haut des remparts:
'Pars!'
Tous las chasseurs sont dans la plaine,
Pleine
D'ardents seigneurs, de senechaux
Chauds."

The English reader is frequently reminded by Hugo's verses of the queer,
abrupt, and _outre_ measures, and fantastic rimes of Robert Browning.
Compare with the above, _e.g._, his "