numerous other denizens of the church and its cloisters do
nothing during all this time? Why did the _truands_, who, though they
were all scoundrels, were certainly not all fools, confine themselves to
this frontal assault of so huge a building? Why did the little rascal
Jean Frollo not take some one with him? These are not questions of mere
dull common sense; it is only dull absence of common sense which will
think them so. Scott, who, once more, was not too careful in stopping
loose places, managed the attacks of Tillietudlem and Torquilstone
without giving any scope for objections of this kind.

Hugo's strong point was never character, and it certainly is not so
here. Esmeralda is beautiful, amiable, pathetic, and unfortunate; but
the most uncharitable interpretation of Mr. Pope's famous libel never
was more justified than in her case. Her salvage of Gringoire and its
sequel give about the only situations in which she is a real
person,[100] and they are purely episodic. Gringoire himself is as much
out of place as any literary man who ever went into Parliament. Some may
think better of Claude Frollo, who may be said to be the
Miltonic-Byronic-Satanic hero. I own I do not. His mere
specification--that of the ascetic scholar assailed by physical
temptation--will pass muster well enough, the working out of it hardly.

His brother, the _vaurien_ Jean, has, I believe, been a favourite with
others or the same, and certainly a Villonesque student is not out of
place in the fifteenth century. Nor is a turned-up nose, even if it be
artificially and prematurely reddened, unpardonable. But at the same
time it is not in itself a passport, and Jean Frollo does not appear to
have left even the smallest _Testament_ or so much as a single line
(though some snatches of song are assigned to him) reminding us of the
"Dames des Temps Jadis" or the "Belle Heaulmiere." Perhaps even Victor
never presumed more unfortunately on victory than in bringing in Louis
XI., especially in one scene, which directly challenges comparison with
_Quentin Durward_. While, though Scott's _jeunes premiers_ are not, as
he himself well knew and frankly confessed, his greatest triumphs, he
has never given us anything of the kind so personally impersonal as
Phoebus de Chateaupers.

_Per contra_ there are of course to be set passages which are actually
fine prose and some of which might have made magnificent poetry; a real
or at least--what is as good as or be