o which he had been elected. He even
found himself laughed at, and he retired to Brussels in disgust. Here he
was identified by public opinion with the Communists, and subjected to
some manifestations of popular displeasure, which, unfortunately, his
sensitive temperament and vivid imagination magnified unreasonably.
Returning to France after the publication of nearly his weakest book,
_L'Annee Terrible_, he lived quietly, but as a kind of popular and
literary idol, till his death in 1885. Of his abundant later (including
not a little posthumous) work _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, another historical
romance, and two books of poetry (a second series of the _Legende des
Siecles_, 1877, and _Les Quatre Vents de l'Esprit_, 1881) at their best,
equal anything he has ever done. The second _Legende_ is inferior to the
first in variety of tone and in vivid pictorial presentment, but equals
it in the declamatory vigour of its best passages. _Les Quatre Vents de
l'Esprit_ is, perhaps, the most striking single book that Victor Hugo
produced, containing as it does lyric and narrative work of the very
finest quality, and a drama of an entirely original character, which,
after more than sixty years of publicity, showed a new side of the
author's genius.

This somewhat minute account of Victor Hugo's work must be supplemented
by some general criticism of his literary characteristics. As will
probably have been observed, from what has already been said, there were
remarkable gaps in his ability. In purely intellectual characteristics,
the characteristics of the logician and the philosopher, he was weak. He
was also, as has been said, deficient in the sense of humorous contrast,
and in the perception of strict literary proportion. Long years of
solitary pre-eminence, and of the frequently unreasonable worship of
fools as well as of wise men, gave him, or encouraged in him, a tendency
to regard the universe too much from the point of view of France in the
first place, Paris in the second, and Victor Hugo in the third. His
unequalled skill in the management of proper names tempted him to abuse
them as instruments of sonority in his verse. He is often inaccurate in
fact, presenting in this respect a remarkable resemblance to his
counterpart and complement Voltaire. The one merit which swallowed up
almost all others in classical and pseudo-classical literature is
wanting in him--the sense of measure. He is a childish politician, a
visionary social