Leroux, and Charles de Remusat, wrote in it;
but its literary importance in history is due to the fact that here
Sainte-Beuve, the critic of the movement, began, and for a long time
carried out the vast series of critical studies of French and other
literature which, partly by destruction and partly by construction, made
the older literary theory for ever obsolete. The various names in poetry
and prose of this romantic movement must now be reviewed.

[Sidenote: Victor Hugo.]

Victor Marie Hugo was born at Besancon on the 28th of February, 1802.
His father was an officer of distinction in Napoleon's army, his mother
was of Vendean blood and of royalist principles, which last her son for
a long time shared. His literary activity began extremely early. He was,
as has been seen, a contributor to the _Conservateur Litteraire_ at the
age of seventeen, and, with much work which he did not choose to
preserve, some which still worthily finds a place in his published
collections appeared there. Indeed, with his two brothers, Abel and
Eugene, he took a principal share in the management of the periodical.
His _Odes et Poesies Diverses_ appeared in 1822, when he was twenty, and
were followed two years afterwards by a fresh collection. In these
poems, though great strength and beauty of diction are apparent, nothing
that can be called distinct innovation appears. It is otherwise with the
_Odes et Ballades_ of 1826, and the _Orientales_ of 1829. Here the
Romantic challenge is definitely thrown down. The subjects are taken by
preference from times and countries which the classical tradition had
regarded as barbarous. The metres and rhythm are studiously broken,
varied, and irregular; the language has the utmost possible glow of
colour as opposed to the cold correctness of classical poetry, the
completest disdain of conventional periphrasis, the boldest reliance on
exotic terms and daring neologisms. Two romances in prose, more
fantastic in subject and audacious in treatment than the wildest of the
_Orientales_, had preceded the latter. The first, _Han d'Islande_, was
published anonymously in 1823. It handled with much extravagance, but
with extraordinary force and picturesqueness, the adventures of a bandit
in Norway. The second, _Bug Jargal_, an earlier form of which had
already appeared in the _Conservateur_, was published in 1826. But the
rebels, of whom Victor Hugo was by this time the acknowledged chief,
knew that the theatre was