Page:Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (tr. Shoberl, 1833).djvu/490

 among novelists, what our Martin is among painters: both can make a mere crowd sublime, both animate mere masses of masonry. Hugo likes to choose extreme cases of human nature; Martin chooses the great and singular epochs of history: and no artists ever struck out more vivid ideas of terrific but momentary states of natural or social existence. The scenes of this work are numerous and striking, particularly the siege of the cathedral by the banded beggars and vagabonds of Paris, in the night; or the appalling interview of the impassioned monk and his victim, in the filthy dungeons of the Palais de Justice; or the strange and grotesque scene of the Fête des Fous, in the Hall of the Palais; or the Alsatian picture of the examination and projected hanging of Gringoire among the thieves in the Cour des Miracles."-—Spectator.

" Victor Hugo is a most powerful writer—-a man of splendid genius and gigantic grasp of mind. Nothing can be more graphic than his descriptions of Notre-Dame in its ancient and modern state, ancient and modern Paris, a Parisian holyday in the fifteenth century, the feast of the Kings and the Fools, the performance of a 'mystery,' the Argotiers or Truands and gipsies, the cell and its wretched inhabitants in Roland's Tower, the election of The Fools' Pope, the 'Question Chamber' and its horrors, the oubliettes, the chamber of Louis XL, the assault and defence of Notre-Dame, the execution of La Esmeralda, the terrific fate of the monk, &c."—Court Journal.

"The most powerful of all Victor Hugo's writings. The writings of Victor Hugo are not so well known in this country as they deserve to be. Few Englishmen are able to read them with facility in the original; for the author has not merely a style but a language of his own. The truth is, he has culled from all ages and all ranks, and from every era of French literature, words and expressions wherewith to embody forth the strange creations of his powerful imagination. La Esmeralda, the gipsy, is a sweet and lovely creature; she never appears without our sympathies being powerfully awakened in her favour. The originality of this character has been contested—in our opinion, very unjustly—by some of the French critics, and by the Foreign Quarterly—the latter assuming that it was copied from Scott's Fenella—Scott's Fenella, indeed, was itself a copy—and the translator of 'Notre-Dame' asserts that the first outline was suggested by La Gitanilla of Cervantes. All, in our judgment, are wrong: no character can be more intimately identified with the genius of Victor Hugo, than this interesting, generous, and high-minded gipsy girl. The character of Phœbus de Chateaupers, the bold, reckless, gay, gallant, good-tempered, light-hearted, and faithless captain of gendarmerie, is also original, and wrought out with great skill. The archdeacon Claude Frollo is a striking specimen of those churchmen of the fifteenth century, who united the grossest superstition to the most consummate hypocrisy, and applied the influences of religion to acts of the blackest perfidy. There are many historical characters in this work, and, among others, our old acquaintances in Quentin Durward, Louis XI., Olivier-le-Daim, and the squinting Provost, Tristan l'Hermite. The tale is so full of incident, that we feel it is quite impossible to do any thing like justice to the work."—Athenæum.

"No one can deny the talent displayed in Notre-Dame, the rich and poetic tone of the description, the graphic reality of the more active scenes, and the actual presence given by the imagination to the cathedral: its sculpture is a living thing in Hugo's hands, and the dim purple of the lofty aisles becomes instinct with spiritual existence."—Literary Gazette.