shed in 1859, and from which the
poems contained in this selection are taken, left great spaces vacant
in the ground-plan of the work, and little attempt was made in the
subsequent series, which appeared in 1877 and 1883, to fill up those
spaces. In fact, Hugo has left large tracts of human history untrod. He
has scarcely touched the civilization of the East, he has given us no
adequate picture of ancient Greece. _L'Aide offerte a Majorien_ can
hardly be regarded as a sufficient picture of the wanderings of the
nations, nor _Le Regiment du Baron Madruce_ as an adequate embodiment
of the spirit of the eighteenth century. The Reformation, and, what is
stranger still, the French Revolution, are not handled at all, though
the heroism of the Napoleonic era finds fitting description in _Le
Cimetiere d'Eylau_. The truth is that Hugo set himself a task which
was perhaps beyond the power of any single poet to accomplish, and was
certainly one for which he was not altogether well fitted. He did not
possess that capacity for taking a broad and impartial view of history
which was needed in the author of such an epic as he designed. His
strong predilections on the one hand, and his violent antipathies on the
other, swayed his choice of subjects, narrowed his field of vision,
and influenced his manner of presentment. The series cannot therefore
pretend to philosophic completeness. It is a gallery of pictures painted
by a master-hand, and pervaded by a certain spirit of unity, yet devoid
of any strict arrangement, and formed on no carefully maintained
principle. It is a set of cameos, loosely strung upon a thread, a
structure with countless beautiful parts, which do not however cohere
into any symmetrical whole. The poems are cast in many forms; allegory,
narrative, vision, didactic poetry, lyric poetry, all find a place.
There is little history, but much legend, some fiction, and a good deal
of mythology. The series was not designed as a whole. _La Chanson des
Aventuriers de la Mer_ was written in or before 1840, _Le Mariage de
Roland_, _Aymerillot_, and _La Conscience_ in or about 1846, and other
pieces at intervals between 1849 and 1858, the date at which the poet
appears to have begun the task of building these fragments into an epic
structure. Nor is there in these poems any dispassionate attempt to
portray the character of the successive ages in the life of the race.
For Hugo there was no 'emancipation du moi.' The _Legende_ is le