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 HUGO 35 HI GO, Vietor Marie, a French poet and novel- ist, born in Besancon, Feb. 26, 1802. The son of an officer whose military duties called him out of France, he was carried in childhood to Elba, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1809 ho was taken to Paris ; and here for two years, under the exclusive supervision of his mother and the care of an old priest, he com- menced his classical studies in company with an elder brother, Eugene, and a young girl who afterward became his wife. In 1811, his father having been made general and appointed major-domo of Joseph Bonaparte, the new king of Spain, Victor went to Madrid, and entered the seminary of nobles with a view of becoming one of the pages of Joseph ; but subsequent events defeated this design. In 1812 Mme. Hugo returned to Paris with her two sons, and had their classical education continued by the same clergyman who had already instructed them. On the fall of the empire a separation took place between the general and his wife ; and thenceforth the young man was placed entirely under the con- trol of the former. He entered a private academy to prepare himself for admission to the polytechnic school. Here he evinced some taste and ability for mathematics, but a much stronger inclination toward poetry; and his first poems gave promise of such talent that liis father was finally persuaded to allow him to follow literature as his vocation. In 1817 he presented to the French academy a poem upon Lei avantages de Vitude. He afterward won three prizes in succession at the Toulouse academy of floral games. His first volume of Odes et ballades (1822) created a sensation. Two novels, Han d'Mande (1823) and Bug- Jargal (1825), exhibited him as an original and forcible prose writer, but already displayed that predilection for the horrible and mon- strous which characterizes most of his greater productions. His second volume of Odes et ballades appeared in 1826. About this pe- riod, in conjunction with Sainte-Beuve, An- toine and Emile Deschamps, A. de Vigny, Bou- langer the painter, and David the sculptor, he formed a kind of literary association, called the Cenacle, in the meetings of which new literary and artistic doctrines were debated. They also established a periodical, called La musefrancaiae, which attracted little attention. The drama of Cromwell (1827), although un- suitable for the stage, was presented as a spe- cimen of the literary reforms aimed at by the new school ; but it had much less importance than the preface, which was a treatise on ses- thetics. Thenceforth Victor Hugo was the acknowledged leader of the romanticists, who waged earnest war against their opponents, the classicists. His claims to this distinction were strengthened in 1828 by the publication of Leu orientalet. Le dernier jour d'un con- da?nne, which followed, fascinated the public by its vivid delineation of the mental tortures of a man doomed to execution. The contest between the two opposite schools reached its climax when, on Feb. 26, 1830, the drama of Hernani was produced at the Th6atre Fran- cais. In 1831 Hugo won another dramatic triumph with Marion Delorme, while his lyri- cal poems Les feuillet d'automne and his nov- el Notre Dame de Paris were received with enthusiasm. The performance of his dramas, Le roi s'amuse (1832), Lucrece Borgia and Ma- rie Tudor (1833), Angela, tyran de Padoue (1835), Ruy Bias (1838), and especially Le* burgraves (1843), drew forth marked appro- bation ; his political poems, Let chants du crepuscule (1835), Les voix interieures (1837), and Les rayons et les ombres (1840), were high- ly popular ; and his miscellaneous writings, Claude Gueux, fctude tur Mirabeau, Littera- ture et philoiophie melees (1834), and Le Rhin (1842), were scarcely less successful. His lite- rary reputation had secured his election to the French academy in 1841, notwithstanding the opposition of the members attached to the old classic school; and having thus reached the highest distinction in literature, he now in- dulged in political aspirations, which were partly gratified by his being created in 1845 a peer of France by King Louis Philippe. On the revolution of February, 1848, he was elected a deputy to the constituent assembly, where he generally voted with the conserva- tive party. On his reelection to the legislative assembly, he evinced more democratic and so- cialistic tendencies. In vehement speeches he denounced the reactionary tendencies of the majority, and the secret policy of President Louis Napoleon. On the coup d'etat of Dec. 2, 1851, Hugo was among those deputies who vainly attempted to assert the rights of the as- sembly and to preserve tha constitution. His conduct led to his proscription ; he took refuge in the island of Jersey, where, while resuming his literary pursuits, he continued his opposi- tion to Louis Napoleon, publishing Napoleon le Petit (1852), and his bitter satires Les chd- timents (1853). Two years later he was com- pelled, on account of some hostile manifesta- tion to the French government, to remove to the island of Guernsey. He refused to accept the amnesty offered to political exiles in 1859. In 1856 he published Les contemplations, a collection of lyrical and personal poems, and in 1859 La legende del tiecles (2 vols. 8vo), a series of poems mainly of an epical character. Les miserables, a romance which had been an- nounced several years before, appeared in nine languages simultaneously at Paris, London, Brussels, Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Tu- rin, and Now York (April, 1862). Its success equalled that of any of his previous works. An illustrated edition, published in parts (Paris, 1863-'5), attained a sale of 150,000 cop- ies. In 1865 he published Chansons desrues et des l>ois, in which all the peculiarities of the author were exhibited in an exaggerated de- gree. Les tratsailleurs de la mer (1866) was also very popular ; but Uhomme qui rit (1869),