reat poet. We are, therefore, equal."

In spite, however, of his ardent republicanism, he was very fond of
speaking of his own noble descent. Again and again he styled himself "a
peer of France;" and he and his family made frequent allusions to the
knights and bishops and counselors of state with whom he claimed an
ancestral relation. This was more than inconsistent. It was somewhat
ludicrous; because Victor Hugo's ancestry was by no means noble. The
Hugos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in any way
related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest and
respectable, but by no means one of distinction. His grandfather was a
carpenter. One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of a
barber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker.

If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely democratic, he would
have been proud to think that he sprang from good, sound, sturdy stock,
and would have laughed at titles. As it was, he jeered at all
pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himself
distinctions that were not really his. His father was a soldier who
rose from the ranks until, under Napoleon, he reached the grade of
general. His mother was the daughter of a ship owner in Nantes.

Victor Hugo was born in February, 1802, during the Napoleonic wars, and
his early years were spent among the camps and within the sound of the
cannon-thunder. It was fitting that he should have been born and reared
in an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle. He was essentially the
laureate of revolt; and in some of his novels--as in Ninety-Three--the
drum and the trumpet roll and ring through every chapter.

The present paper has, of course, nothing to do with Hugo's public
life; yet it is necessary to remember the complicated nature of the
man--all his power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all
his vanity and his eccentricities. We must remember, also, that he was
French, so that his story may be interpreted in the light of the French
character.

At the age of fifteen he was domiciled in Paris, and though still a
schoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetry
and of literature. He received honorable mention from the French
Academy in 1817, and in the following year took prizes in a poetical
competition. At seventeen he began the publication of a literary
journal, which survived until 1821. His astonishing energy became
evident in the many pub