The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-04-18

page. He used to work standing at a desk, and walking about while he was Thea he would come down to breakfast, and charm all by his gem iality and good humor, by his jokes and puns and word-puzzles.
 The unpublished works which Victor Hugo is now arranging and putting in order, are two new volumes of philosoph- ical writings, several volumes of verse, and half dozen plays written during his exile. These manuscripts will be pub lished after his death, and form the mate rial, M. Meurice tells me, for six or eight volumes. Then there will be several volumes of correspondence-for during his sixty-eight yeavs of literary work Vic. tor Hugo has found time to write many letters. M. Meurice has very volumin- ous and interesting correspondence ad- dressed to him by Victor Hugo, during the eighteen years of his exile and M. Vacquerie, himself poet and prose writer of no mean talent, has spent his life in chanting the praises of Hugo. No more touching case of self-abnegation could be found in the annals of literature. Since 1869 M. Vacquiere has been editor of Le Rappel newspaper, and in that ca pacity he has much hatred for the enc mics and detractors of Hugo as he has admiration for the poet. A curious in stance of this hatred is the fact that M. Vacquiere has never allowed the name of Zola to be printed in the columns of the RabbeI, so that for the readers of that journal the pontiff of naturalism and all his works-the Assomoir," Mana" " Pot Bouille" and others--do not exist Supposing a man to have read no other paper but the Rabtel during the past ten years, he would be absolutely ignorant as to contemporary French literature, which would, perhaps, be no great loss.
 The great desire of Victor Hugo's friends now is that he may live until 1889, be present at the opening of the great exhibition, and to preside over the cen tenary of the revolution of I78o. Con- sidering Hugo's very healthy nature there seems no reason why he should not live tainly would be glorious incident in his career te add the lustre of his presence to the centenary fetes. Then indeed it might be said that nothing has been wanting to the glory of Hugo, for he will have been of all men that have lived the most universally depreciated and the most universally praised. No man has been more furiously and passionately dis cussed than Hugo. His verse and his prose have been equally vilipended. He has been qualified as vandal, brigand, an incendiary, an iconoclast, madman, a savage, and even a cannibal. He has been compared to Lucan, Du Bartas, Scaron, and Gongora. He has been found absurd, ridiculous, giandiloquent, trivial, convulsive, emphatic. Men of high station and members of the French Academy have signed petitions to pre- vent the representation of his pieces. Finally he has been tired at in the Champs Elysees. But he has triumphed over everything, aud now he sits en- throned in glory, and strange legends are current about the atmosphere of in- cense in which he is said to live, the theatrical surroun lings in which he re- ceives homage, the apocalyptic language in which he expresses the consciousness of hIs genius. It must be admitted that these legends are not without sub stratum of fact, for which, perhaps, his friends are as much responsible as the poet himself. But it must not be forgot ten that the man who is accustomed to be addressed as "Dear and illustrious Master" is the last of his generation, and that he stands erect and vigorous on its ruins, having buried all his adversaries, even to Napoleon. He has become prophet and idol. The crown of laurels has been placed upon the brow of his marble effigy, under the very eyes of the living model. The only wonder is that Hugo has remained kind, charming, and affable as he is, for it is possible to cite more traits of simplicity in his life than of pomposity. Then to think how inn mense his glory really is l And, after all, where is the merit, much less the use, oi dwelling upon the littleness of the great. | -N0@
 He Knew.