VICTOR HUGO.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3790, 30 May 1885, Page 3

VICTOR HUGO.

The following are extracts fn m the best treatise on the deceased author that has yet appeared in the colony. It is from the *• New Zealand Tablet” In Victor Hugo, who died last Friday at the age of eighty-three, the Revolution has lost one of its most powerful advocates, and the. newer France has lost its vatet tacer. The part played by Victor Hugo towards the earlier France was that of one who condemns utterly and blackens, and, to judge by what be has written, it might be supposed that the whole honor* able history of that great country had arisen since 'B9. The men of the revolution, according to him were the giants who overthrew a baser race, and with them hope itself began. Hugo wrote, moreover, with the unsparing bitterness that marks the renegade, for he was of noble birth and bad been brought up in the traditions and religion of the_ older France, His first published works,indeed bore the impress of snob an education, and his genius had already given a fair promise of what it was to produce before he deported from the early paths in which his feet had trodden. For that Hugo was a genius no one can deny whose judgment is of any worth. . . But all must admit that the lyre of France, in Hugo’s bands, was in the hands of a master. Note grand poete, B6rsnger called him, and Hugo deserved the title, and was indeed a great poet. As a writer of piose also he excelled but by no means in a degree so exalted. His epigrammatic style was occasionally abrupt, and when it was employed in the composition of political or patriotic publications it resulted in ah effect that has been justly termed 11 screeching.” Ho was fond of making a pedantic display of varied learning, not always correct and sometimes ludicrous, and which was often introduced without any special bearing upon the subject with which he had been dealing. The morality he taught, moreover, was of an exceedingly low order, and not only did he justify, or rather paint as heroic and all but Godlike the principles of the red Revolution in its extreme forms, but he celebrated as raising human nature to its loftiest pinnacle much that is degrading and deplorable. Victor Hugo also suffered for his political opinions, and during the Empire he was an exile residing in the Channel Islands—in connection with which banishment it has, moreover, been remarked that during the twenty years it lasted, notwithstanding his loud professions of a belief iu the brotherhood of mankind, be refused to learn a single

word of English. Whether in other respects Victor Hugo also betrayed signs of a life somewhat at variance with the principles he professed, we cannot tell.. What ho may have been in bin private relations we have no means of knowing. We do know that nothing can be a greater mistake than to suppose that the personal character of a writer must necessarily be learned from his works, and no doubt the greater the artist the more the individual is hidden. It is, for example, a perfection of Shakespeare’s works that nothing of the writer can be discerned in them except his unequalled genius, and two publications lately published—those relating reapertively to the lives pf Carlyle and George Eliot—make the fact we allude to more striking still. Victor Hugo wrote very touchingly of his little grand-child, but that is no true test that he had a love for children generally- / Some of the worst and most cruel-men known in history have been loving fathers. Ho professed a respect for bis fellowcrealures, and an interest in the young especially, yet be is accused by one who had the opportunity of knowing, as well as the ability to judge, of flattering yonng men in their conceits, and heedless of the injury and disappointment that might ensue, so that he should not gain claqtieur* for his plays. He was everywhere met when he passed through the streets of Paris by the respectful and affectionate greetings of his fellow citizens, but were bis fellow citizens fully acquainted with his true character? Of all this we know nothing. The poet’s life will, no donbf, be written, and, if with candour that has distinguished certain recent publications, the world will learn the Whole. Meantime, we know that France has lost a great poet ani the Bevolution, as we said, a powerful advocate.