ft Jersey for Guernsey in 1855, owing to the gibes and flouts
of an unlucky revolutionary Jersey journal, _L'Homme_, at the two
governments: Victor Hugo being already a marked man for his pains. The
Guernsey house he inhabited for so many years had a spacious study in
its upper story, with a large window, free to the sun and to the sea.
Here he wrote, tirelessly, tremendously, as his custom was: beginning
betimes in the early morning, and writing on till the time for his
_dejeuner_: standing at a tall desk to write in his sea-tower. You must
turn to certain of his poems and to the pages of _Les Miserables_ and
_Les Travailleurs_ for the mental colours and phantasmagoria of those
days and years.

It would be easy to point out, resuming an immense amount of criticism
of his romances and of this story in particular, the defects on the side
of dramatic and true life-likeness to be found in Hugo's
prose-narrative. But it is more helpful in turning to a story-book to
know what has been said unreservedly in its favour. Hugo's greatest
appreciator was superlative in his praise, and it need hardly be
explained that it was Swinburne who brought his tribute to the romance
of Gilliatt also, after positing the parallel claims of Hugo's five
chief romances. Of the five, they were not, he said, to be comparatively
classified in order of merit. "But I may perhaps be permitted to say
without fear of deserved rebuke that none is to me personally a treasure
of greater price than _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_. The splendid energy
of the book makes the superhuman energy of the hero seem not only
possible but natural, and his triumph over all physical impossibilities
not only natural but inevitable." Swinburne's love for the Channel
Islands, and his poems inspired by them, were mainly due as we know to
Hugo's life and his books lived and written there.

E.R.

The following is a list of the chief publications of Victor Hugo:--

POETICAL WORKS:--Nouvelles Odes, 1824; Odes et Poesies Diverses,
1822; Odes et Ballades, 1826; Les Orientales, 1829; Feuilles
d'Automne, 1831; Les Chants du Crepuscule, 1835; Les Voix
Interieures, 1837; Les Rayons et les Ombres, 1840; Odes sur
Napoleon, 1840; Les Chatiments, 1853; Les Contemplations, 1856; La
Legende des Siecles (1st part), 1859; Les Chansons des Rues et des
Bois, 1865; L'Annee Terrible, 1872; La Legende des Siecles (2nd
part), 1877; L'Art d'etre Grand-pere, 1877;