Morning journal and courier., 1886-03-01
Victor Hugo.

From the Edinburgh Review.
 The unique position which Hugo held in ! his own country explains, though it does not | palliate the extraordinary vanity which de- ! stroys his claim to true moral or intellectual
 | greatness. "Son plus grand tort," said 1 Sainte Beuve, lest dans lorgueil immense ct | l'egosme infni dune existence qui ne con- l nait quelle; tout le nal vient de la." Eng l lishmen are disgusted at his constant asser- tions of the grandeur of his aims or the prominence which he gives to everything that touches himself; they cannot pardon the inordinate egotism of such phrases as ''Ii est temps que je desemplisse le monde" or the self esteem of his apostrophe to himself | in the code Olympio:"
 ! :. Toi don't le front sublime accountant rombre Les fronts inferieur.''
 ! Still more intolerable is the self worship which prompts him to threaten God himself with his vengeance. But it must be remem- bered that while yet boy, he was hailed by Chateaubriand as sTenfant sublime;" that before he was 25 he was saluted by the literary men of his day as ''notre roi Victor;" that for years he was accustomed to be spoken of as s'the Master;" that for more than half cen tury he lived in an atmosphere of incense among theatrical surroundings, which in f1ated his natural vanity and swelled the mystic grandiloquence of his apocalyptic ut
 terances. In the first portion of his political
 career he had passed from the religious con- servatism of the Bourbons through the con stitutional liberalism of the Orleanists to re- publicanism. He, well as his fellow ceuntrymen. forgot how much personal motives had in each accelerated the change. After the coup d'etat he parted from the bulk of the nation to make com mon sense of the nation; the vituperative violence of 'Les Chatiments" was justified by events. The halo of exile had long lin gered round lis name; his new character of prophet added to its lustre. When he re- turned to Paris in 1870 he was hailed the incarnation of those democratic principles of which he had been the chief confessor. To himself and to the nation his life seemed to bear symbolic import. The Tyrteus of the war, he set to music every passion which swelled or tortured the heart of France In gloriflcation of Hugo his countrymen grati- fled their instinct for display. Many rever- enced him national monument, the rep resentative of the literary glory of France; advanced theorists worshiped him as the apostle of humanity who had bequeathed to the world gospel of progress which would lead to the triumph of revolutionary princi- ples; the Parisians idolized him partly be- cause his pride in their city was boundIess, partly because his melodious but incoherent rhapsodies fraternity appealed to the sen timent which the cynical workman enshrines in the place of religion. Not only was he canonized in his lifetime, but after his death writers and orators from M. Floquet to M. Renan vied in his deifcation. His obse- quies rather resembled an apotheosis thau 8 funeral. But, in our opinion, the honors were paid more to the man than the writer; his personality, not his literary merit, gave him his extraordinary influence over his con temporaries. His faults are Sc enormous and so conspicuous that, when the present gener-
 ation has passed away, the number of his blind worshipers will become, we venture to think, comparatively small