Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/220

 162 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS all Europe gathered round him to offer congratulations on his hale and hearty old age ; since then, with more than the hands full of flowers of the classic tradi- tion, with honors and praises from every quarter of the earth, he has been carried to his grave. The very sight of a man so distinguished, the consciousness of his honored existence as the representative of the noblest and most all-embracing of the arts that which depends for its effects upon the simplest and most universal of instincts was an advantage to the world. The extravagances of hero-worship are inevitable, and in nothing is the ridiculous so tremblingly near to the sub- lime ; but allowing for all that, and for what is worse, the almost equally inevi- table foolishness which adulation creates, the position of Victor Hugo was of itself an advantage to the world. In a soberer pose altogether, and with a noble modesty which we may claim as belonging to our race, Walter Scott occupied a somewhat similar position which would have been all the greater had he lived to Hugo's age, an element which must necessarily be taken into consideration ; but, save in this one case, there has been no parallel to the eminence of the great Frenchman in the estimation of his country and of the world. It is not now that the critic requires to step forth to establish the foundations of this great fame, or decide upon its reality or lasting character. This has been done in the poet's lifetime by a hundred voices, favorable and otherwise ; no need to wait for death to give the final decision, as in some cases has been necessary. It is scarcely possible to imagine that, after so long a time, any dis- covery can be made, or any change of taste occur, which would interfere with the supreme position of Victor Hugo. A new generation has been born in the faith which to their elders is a matter of assured and triumphant conviction. But it is a grateful office to go over again some of the noblest productions which human genius has ever given forth, and to contemplate in their unity the many works of a life as much longer than that of ordinary men as its inspiration was above theirs. It seems sad and strange, as well as laughable and ludicrous, that the great poet should be regarded by a vast number of his countrymen, and perhaps by the majority of the Paris mob which paid him the last honors in so characteristic a way, as a revolutionary politician and a democratic leader. We will take the privilege of the foreigner to leave out that side of his life as much as may be prac- ticable. " Napoleon le Petit " and the " Histoire d'un Crime " are works but little worthy of his genius. Political animosities, sharpened by personal grievances, have in many cases an immense immediate effect in literature, but they pay for this easy success by speedy collapse ; and scarcely even the magnificent rhetoric and splen- did vituperation of " Les Chatiments " will keep them living when the world has forgotten the lesser Napoleon, as it already begins to do. His patriotic fury, the impassioned utterances of his exile, the tremendous force of feeling with which he flung himself into the struggles of France, took up a large share of Victor Hugo's life, and will procure him a certain place in the historical records of his period. But when all the commotion and the din have died away, as indeed in a great measure they have already done, these fiery diatribes, these burning lava-