ly things. But this fault is
the fault of a great nature, grandeur exalted into grandiosity, till the
heroes of these plays, "Hernani," "Marion Delorme," "Le Roi d'Amuse,"
loom and stalk across the scene like epic demigods of more than mortal
stature and mortal passions. But Hugo was not only a great dramatist and
a great poet, but a most clever playwright. "Hernani" is full of
effective stage devices, crises in the action which make an audience hold
its breath or shudder; moments of intense suspense like that in the third
act, where the old hidalgo pauses before his own portrait, behind which
the outlaw is hidden; or that in the fifth, where Hernani hears at first,
faint and far away, the blast of the fatal horn that summons him to leave
his bride at the altar and go to his death. The young romantics of the
day all got "Hernani" by heart and used to rehearse it at their
assemblies, each taking a part; and the famous trumpet, the _cor
d'Hernani_, became a symbol and a rallying call.

No such scene would have been possible in an English playhouse as that
which attended the first representation of "Hernani" at the Theatre
Francais. For not only is an English audience comparatively indifferent
to rules of art and canons of taste, but the unities had never prevailed
in practice in England, though constantly recommended in theory. The
French had no Shakspere, and the English no Academy. We may construct an
imaginary parallel to such a scene if we will suppose that all reputable
English tragedies from 1600 down to 1830 had been something upon the
model of Addison's "Cato" and Johnson's "Irene", or better still upon the
model of Dryden's heroic plays in rimed couplets; and that then a drama
like "Romeo and Juliet" had been produced upon the boards of Drury Lane,
and a warm spurt of romantic poetry suddenly injected into the icy
current of classic declamation.

Having considered the chief points in which the French romantic movement
differed from the similar movements in England and Germany, let us now
glance at the history of its beginnings, and at the work of a few of its
typical figures. The presentation of "Hernani" in 1830 was by no means
the first overt act of the new school. Discussion had been going on for
years in the press. De Stendhal says that the classicists had on their
side two-thirds of the Academie Francaise, and all of the French
journalists; that their leading organ, however, was the very influentia