Springfield globe-republic. (Springfield, Ohio) 1884-1887, 1885-08-09
VICTOR HUGO.

|
siasm. That he was not the man,
however, whom the funeral orators de-
scribed, 1.-The man Of the age" "the
incarnation Of the nineteenth century, "
the world poet, 'the MASTER" may
be safely affirmed. All that was said
and done at his death and burial par
took of the almost grotesque cxtrava-
gancc of his own sayings and doings
| One OF the most characteristic Incl
dents in the weeks Immediately follow
ing his death was the reported anger
Of tho Paris press with the aldermen Of
London for refusing vote OF condo
cnce upon the occasion. Rochcfort
called them band of Ignorant, jeal-
Gus turtle-soup eaters.'
Indeed the figure Of Victor Hugo 10
so surrounded by sensational melo-
| dramatic effect of every kind, every
thing about him is and long has been
so spectacular, that it is not at all easy
TO define his exact quality and in
iluence. To rank him among the
| great men or great historic figures Of
the world, as is the French disposition,
is a vain endeavor Even as q politi.
cal, social, or moral force in France.
| Victor Hugo could not be compared
with Voltairc, or Rousseau, or Diderot.
As "liberator of humanity" he Is in
no degree whatever comparable to
Goethe. He was, indeed, in the French
| phrase, a "child of the age" and of the
Revolution. He had a quick sympathy
and flowing tongue for the oppressed
and the suffering. He was the chief
leader of the Romantic school against
, the Classical school in the literature Of
his country, and he was what the
French call a marked personality. His
conceit was sublime. He shifted up
with an Olympian air the incense of in
cessant adulaiion. Frenchmen seemed
to think that he was not to be men,
toned but with an explosion of super
latives, and the unbounded extrava-
gance of all alusion to him destroyed
the expression of sincere feeling.
Victor Hugo was mainly literary
man. As an efficient public man, q
statesman, a counsellor, q leader in
critical moments, in the midst OF fierce
revolutionary agitatiOns, his warmest
eulogist could hardly claim for him
eminence. He was in the truest sense
of the familiar phrase sentimental
' politician, by which we mean not a
| man who acknowledges the power OF
sentiment in the movement Of public
affairs. but man who spoke and acted
| upon theories which took no account
of fact. of experience. and Of human
| nature. Because men are poor and
oppressed and suffering. and shout for
| liberty, equality, and fraternity, it does
not follow that they can organize and
administer wise, just, and equal gov
crnment, nor that they may not, even
with humane and excellent impulses
aud desires. introduce anarchy and the
maddest injustice. 1t is the vital evil
OF tyranny and long-continued wrong
to men that they become dehumanized.
They are reduced by oppression and
continued deprivation of every means
of enlightenment and intelligence to a
SEMI -brutish condition. 1t is the dead
ly sin Of every form of prolonged in
justice that it tends to eXtinguish man
mood in the victim. The prisoner
whose legs have been bound under him
for years can stand erect and walk
merely because you cut the bonds. His
legs are wlthcred.
Victor Hugo's kind heart and ern-
him the Moses to lead them out of tho
, wilderness of their sorrow. Indeed,
there are passages in his works de-
scrlbing his conduct in certain emer-
gcncics which raise inevitably pleas
ant smile ut his child-like confidence 0
| in the effectiveness of ribbon or a
| phrase to appeasc the most turbulent
| passions and change the current of
events. Compared with Lamartine in
| the days of As, who more than once by
| his tact and oratorical ascendency
| commanded and restrained the popu-
lar passion and purpose. Victor Hugo
| is ineffective. He stimulated the feel
ing and expressed it. but he did not
control it in any degree. Therefore as .
| political leader or u statesman he holds
no high place.
Testing his character as n poet by
| the standard of greatness which is APP
piled to him, the greatness of the his
toric and acknowledged great men, it
| is not easy to suppose that. conccding
| all the fine passages in his poetic
works. there is any poem of his which
| the world will canonizc with the great
| poems. 1t is probable. indeed. that
| his prose will continue to be more
| priced than his verse, and of all that
| he wrote Les WSerdbies seems to bo
surest of the longest date, because it is
prose epic of the sorrow and suffer-
| ing that arise from the unchristian and
| inhuman conditions of civilized society.
| But in this as in his other works the
| art is that of the scene-painter, and it
| has its share of the grotes4ue rhetori-
cal eXcesses which ditfuse an air of un-
reality over the whole.
With his goodness of heart and his
warm symPathies, and his fiery wrath
with wrong, and his constant and
overwhelming self-consciousness and
posturing, and his great literary
| talent the word which seems most
truly to describe Victor Hugo is rhe-
torican. With that character all the
fervor of the panegyrics is in entire ac-
cord, and all the pageant of his burial.
| No people could honor the greatest OF
its benefactors with a more splendid
tribute of spectacular sorrow than
Paris lavished upon the remains Of
Victor Hugo, But the genuine, heart
felt grief that the English-speaking
people felt in the death of Walter
Scott, and the silent mourning that
hushed this country while the dead
body of Abraham Lincoln passed to its
final rest, were very different. 1t was
not the difference of the nations only,
but of the men, George Witiiam Cur
| ~