VICTOR HUGO'S NAPOLEON THE LITTLE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 114, 12 March 1853, Page 10

VICTOR HUGO'S NAPOLEON THE LITTLE.

(From the Spectator.) It would seem as though the human mind were incapable of feeling, or even from mere reasoning of fully perceiving the truth, in the absence of facts which illustrate or impress it. From the time when the religiopolitical commotions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries roused the European world to inquiry and criticism, the character of Brutus, and similar worthies of antiquity has been exposed to some obloquy, because, in our for the most part hereditary and always settled forms of government, we could not realize to our minds the crime which an ancient tyrant committed by seizing a state without shadow of right and against all law: as little, consequently, could we feel the universal hatred which such a crime excited. Immediately after " the. 2nd of December" and its wanton massacres, —from the guilt of which, to say the truth, the tyrants of antiquity were free, —men could better understand the feeling of Greece and Rome, which prompted them to regard the spoiler of a nation as the enemy of the human race, and to place him beyond the pale of law or mercy. The sense of personal honour derived from chivalry, and the pure morality of the New Testament, render an usurper of this kind safe from the blow of the modern patriot; but it is perhaps more from a sense of • what is due to himself than from any regard to the criminal.

"Speak daggers, but use none," is the motto of Victor Hugp in his diatribe descriptive of the character and crimes of Louis Napoleon. So far as regards the President, it is probable that no denunciation can be too severe, or any exposition too minute ; but there is a measure in these things for the mind of the reader. The poetic invention arid fluency of Victor Hugo have run too far for literary effect, at least with English readers. As long as there is any foundation in fact for his dramatic or figurative personations, there is the interest arising from reality however elaborated; but sometimes there is too much of the poet's "airy nothing," or at least the same generic idea is presented in too many variations of form or language.

When the substance of Napoleon the Little is abstracted from its rhetoricaLrhapsodies or its poetical and .philosophic ideas, it consists of a biography and character of the President, called " The Man"; in which his life and public career, especially since his first election, are minutely dissected and exhibited. "The Government" is a similar exposition of the new regime ; too theatrical for English tastes. This i 3 followed by "The Crime" ; in which Vie tor Hugo gives a full account of the murders of December, from the observations of

eye-witnesses; which does not differ substantially from the narratives published at the time in the English newspapers. This is succeeded by the more political or social, crimes that followed the seizure and the massacre; an examination of French Parliamentarianism destroyed by the despot, and of the " absolving vote." The work concludes with a return to the subiect of Napoleon's character, and some indications of the writer's hopes for the future. Throughout, there is the French vivacity and power of personifying, which often gives life to indifferent substance, while it as often dashes the best by directing attention to the artist. This picture of Napoleon has less of the last fault than almost anything "in the book, but it is not perfectly free from it. " Louis Bonaparte is a man of middle height, cold, pale, slow in his movements, having the air of a person not quite awake. He has published, as we mentioned before, a tolerable treatise on Artillery, and is thought to be acquainted with the manoeuvering of canon, "Heis a good horseman. He speaks drawlingly, with a slight German accent. His histrionic abilities were displayed at the Eglintouu tournament. He has a thick moustache, covering his smile like that of the Duke d'Artois, and a dull.eye like that of Charles IX. "Judging of him apart from what he calls his ' necessary acts' or his i grand acts,' he is a vulgar commonplace personage, puerile, theatrical, and vain. The persons who are invited to St. Cloud in the summer, receive with the invitation an order to bring a morning toilette and an evening toilette. He loves finery, trinkery, feathers, embroidery, spangles, grand words, and grand titles—the sounding, the glittering, all the glass-ware of (power. In his quality of cousin to the battle of Austerlitz, he dresses himself up as a general. "He cares little about being despised; he contents himself with the appearance of res-, pect. " This man would tarnish the background of history; he absolutely sullies its foreground. Europe smiled when, thinking of Haiti, she saw this White Soulouque appear. But there is now in Europe, in every understanding mind, abroad as at home, a profound stupor, a feeling as it were of personal insult; for the European Continent, whether it will or no, is a bound guarantee for France, and that which abases France humiliates Europe. " Before the 2nd December, the leaders of the Right used habitually to say of Louis Bonaparte —'Tis an idiot. They were mistaken. QuestionlesSj that brain of his is perturbed, and has large gaps in it; but you can discern here and there in it, thoughts consecutive and concatenate. 'Tis a book whence pages have been torn. Louis Napoleon has a fixed idea; but a fixed idea is not idiotoy: he knows what he wants, and he goes strait on to it—through justice, through law, through reason, through honesty, through humanity, no doubt, but still straight on. " The great talent of M. Louis Bonaparte is silence. "To feign death, that is his art. He lies mute and motionless, looking in the opposite direction-to4tis object, until the hour for action comes ; then he turns his head, and leaps upon his prey. His policy starts out on you abruptly, at some unheeded turning, pistol in hand, ' wi fur. Up to that point, there is the least possible movement. For one moment in the course of the three years that have just passed away, he was seen face to face with Changarnier; who himself, on his part, medidated an enterprise. lhant o6scuri,&s Virgil says. France observed, with a certain anxiety, these two men. What was in their minds ? Was not the one, in thought, Cromwell; the other, Monk? Men asked one another these questions as they looked on the two men. In both of them, there was the same attitude of mystery, the same tactics •.of■■immobility. Bonaparte said not a word, Changarnier made not a gesture; this did not stir, that did not breathe; they seemed competing which should be the most statuesque: ; '* This silence of his Louis Bonaparte sometimes breaks; but then he does not speak, he lies. This man lies as other men breathe. He announces an honest intention—be on your guard: he affirms—distrust him: he takes an oath—tremble for your safety."