at once the stronghold of their enemies, and
the most important point of vantage for themselves. Victor Hugo's
theatrical, or at least dramatic, _debut_ was not altogether happy.
_Cromwell_, which was published in 1828, was not acted, and indeed, from
its great length and other peculiarities, could hardly have been acted.
It is rather a romance thrown into dramatic form than a play. In its
published shape, however, it was introduced by an elaborate preface,
containing a full exposition of the new views which served as a kind of
manifesto. Some minor works about this time need not be noticed. The
final strokes in verse and prose were struck, the one shortly before the
revolution of July, the other shortly after it, by the drama of
_Hernani, ou l'Honneur Castillan_, and the prose romance of _Notre Dame
de Paris_. The former, after great difficulties with the actors and with
outside influences--it is said that certain academicians of the old
school actually applied to Charles X. to forbid the representation--was
acted at the Theatre Francais on the 25th of February, 1830. The latter
was published in 1831. The reading of these two celebrated works,
despite nearly sixty years of subsequent and constant production with
unflagging powers on the part of their author, would suffice to give any
one a fair, though not a complete, idea of Victor Hugo, and of the
characteristics of the literary movement of which he has been the head.
The main subject of _Hernani_ is the point of honour which compels a
noble Spaniard to kill himself, in obedience to the blast of a horn
sounded by his mortal enemy, at the very moment of his marriage with his
beloved. _Notre Dame de Paris_ is a picture by turns brilliant and
sombre of the manners of the mediaeval capital. In both the author's
great failing, a deficient sense of humour and of proportion, which
occasionally makes him overstep the line between the sublime and the
ridiculous, is sometimes perceivable. In both, too, there is a certain
lack of technical neatness and completeness in construction. But the
extraordinary command of the tragic passions of pity, admiration, and
terror, the wonderful faculty of painting in words, the magnificence of
language, the power of indefinite poetical suggestion, the sweep and
rush of style which transports the reader, almost against his will and
judgment, are fully manifest in them. As a mere innovation, _Hernani_
is the most striking of the two. Almost ever