sential points not in 1830 with _Hernani_ but in
1829 with _Henri Trois et sa Cour_, the first of the innumerable
successes of Alexandre Dumas, who determined at a single stroke the
fundamental qualities of structure and form and material, and left his
chief no question to solve save that of diction and style. Musset's
earlier poems date from 1828, the year of _les Orientales_, Gautier's
from 1830; and these are also the dates of Balzac's _Chouans_ and _la
Peau de Chagrin_. Moreover, among the intimates of the young leader were
men like Sainte-Beuve, who was two years his junior, and the brothers
Deschamps: whose influence was doubtless exerted more frequently to
encourage than to repress. Towards the end we lost sight of all this,
and saw in Victor Hugo not so much the most glorious survival of
romanticism as romanticism itself, the movement in flesh and blood, the
revolution in general 'summed up and closed' in a single figure. This
agreeable view of things was Hugo's own. From the beginning he took
himself with perfect seriousness, and his followers, however enthusiastic
in admiration, had excellent warrant from above. 'Il _trone_ trop,' says
Berlioz of him somewhere; and M. Maxime du Camp has given an edifying
account of the means he was wont to use to make himself beloved and
honoured by the youth who came to him for counsel and encouragement. How
perfectly he succeeded in this the political part of his function is
matter of history. Gautier's first visit to him was that of a devotee to
his divinity; and years afterwards the good poet confessed that not even
in pitch darkness and in a cellar fathoms under ground should he dare to
whisper to himself that a verse of the Master's was bad. So far as
devotion went there were innumerable Gautiers. Sainte-Beuve was not long
a pillar of orthodoxy; Dumas was always conscious of his own pre-eminence
in certain qualities, and made light of Hugo's dramas as candidly as he
made much of the style in which they are written; and when some creature
of unwisdom saluted Delacroix as 'the Hugo of painting,' the artist of
the _Marino Faliero_ and the _Barque de Don Juan_ resented the compliment
with bitterness. But these were exceptions. The youth of 1830 were
Hugolaters almost to a man.

Equipment and Achievement.

Their enthusiasm was not all irrational. Hugo's supremacy was not that
he was the greatest artist in essentials, for here Dumas was immeasurably
his sup