CHAPTER II.

The merits of M. V. Hugo-His theory-M. V. Hugo aims at unattainable things, M. Dumas at attainable things-Translation from Antony.

I HAVE preferred thus copiously translating from 'Lucrèce Borgia' to writing a more formal description, with short and imperfect extracts, of M. V. Hugo's different dramatic productions. In the first place, I thus give a tolerable idea of one of this writer's principal dramas. In the next place, by selecting a popular performance, I obtain the right to judge the audience which applauded that performance; and, lastly, by selecting for criticism a work which was written on a particular plan, and which, written on that plan, has succeeded, it cannot be said that I have taken an unfair opportunity of judging and condemning this plan itself.

As far as the talent of the author is concerned in Lucrèce Borgia,' I own that I admire

the dark, and terrible, and magnificent-though coarse and furious-energy that he has here brought upon the stage. The last act-the act in which you see the wine-cup and the bier, in which you hear the bacchanal and the dirge-in which, mingled with the voluptuaries garlanded with roses, stalk forth the cowled instruments of assassination and religion; —the last act, in the wild mixture of death and luxury, of murder and superstition, exhibits one of the most striking, the most terrific, the most tremendous, pageants that has yet been brought upon the modern stage.

The author of Hernani' and 'Lucrèce Borgia' is not only a writer of extraordinary powers, but a writer of extraordinary powers in that very branch of composition wherein he has generally been deemed the least successful. M. Victor Hugo might aspire to the place (under a total change of the circumstances of life, and therefore under a total change in the rules of art) which Corneille or Racine once held upon the stage of his country--and, I had almost said, to a place near that which Shakspeare once held upon our own. But why then

why is it that some of his attempts have been such signal failures?—why is it that, in some of his dramas, without ever soaring to the sub

lime, he has grovelled amidst the ridiculous, while even in the last piece I have quoted, in one of those where there is the most to admire, I confess that there appears to me at least as much to forgive.

It is not that M. Victor Hugo is incapable of being a great dramatist, but that he has laid down a set of rules which almost render it impossible that he should be one. The system which spoils the romance of " Notre Dame,"* has been carried out to the most extravagant extent, where it is still less calculated to succeed; and, what is most extraordinary, M. Hugo lays it down with all the solemnity of profound wisdom, that the great art of exciting interest and propagating morality is to take for your heroes and your heroines the most atrocious characters, and to inspire them with some one most excessive virtue. It is hardly to be believed that such a doctrine should be gravely stated but let us hear M. Victor Hugo himself!

"What is the secret thought of 'Le Roi

* A beautiful romance-in which the most interesting person, however, is described as the likeness of a grotesque figure in a Gothic church — and one of the most delicate females ever drawn by the pen of romance, trembles like a galvanized frog!

s'amuse ?' This:-Take the most monstrous physical deformity-place it in the meanest and most degraded social position.* Well; give this creature a soul, and breathe into this soul the sentiment of paternity. The degraded creature will become sublime, the little creature will become great, the depraved creature will become beautiful.

"This is Le Roi s'amuse.' And what is 'Lucrèce Borgia? Now take the moral deformity, the most hideous, the most disgusting, the most complete; put it, where it is most remarkable, in the breast of a woman, and plant in this breast the purest sentiment a woman can possess the sentiment of maternity-and the monster will interest you, and the monster will make you weep, and that soul so deformed will be replete with grace and loveliness. The author will not bring Marion de Lormet on the stage

*Triboulet, the well-known buffoon of Francis the

First. The play turns on the grief of this wretch, painted by M. V. Hugo himself as the vilest of mankind, at his daughter's being seduced by the king—a misfortune which, according to his character and the character of his times, he would have been too happy to undergo.

† The famous prostitute of the time of Louis XIII. The force of the drama consists in the pure and passionate attachment of this lady for a youth, to save

without ennobling her with a pure affection; nor Triboulet, without making him an excellent father; nor Lucrèce Borgia, without making her a devoted mother." True, if there were any law to oblige a dramatist to choose the characters of Marion de Lorme, and Triboulet, and Lucrèce Borgia, and awake in the mind of his audience an affectionate interest for such characters-if there were such a barbarous law as this-it might then be very well, and perhaps very right, for the author to say "I'll soften the characters I am obliged to use in this manner, and since I must make them as interesting, I will make them as virtuous, as I can." - It is very true, moreover, that a vicious buffoon may possibly love his daughter, that a depraved woman of the town may have a chaste and noble passion, that a murderess and assassin may adore her son. But when an author can choose any personage he thinks proper, and can give to that personage any part he thinks proper-if he wish to interest us with a tale of extraordinary filial affection, he should not take a villainous buffoon for his hero, any more than, if he wish to inter

whom from prison she sacrifices once more her oft-sacrificed honour.