HUGO'S LATER CAREER

was present in the earlier plays and especially in Marion Delormey is lacking, and there is frequent resort to the most sensational theatrical effect. It is evident that Hugo needs the metrical restraint, and that much of his success has resulted from his perfect mastery of metrical details.

Three years later, in 1838, appeared Ruy Bias, which was another Spanish play like Hernani, and which Jiad fortunately gone back to the old form. This return to verse and the reappearance of the humorous element which was so advocated in theory and neglected in practice, combined to give the play a greater popularity than any of its predecessors. Fifty performances were given before the play was withdrawn. Now comes an interval of five years, and then Hugo's last acted play, Les Burgraves, was given for the first time in March, 1843. The epic figures of the time of Barbarossa were displayed upon the scene moving in an atmosphere of mediaBval grandeur, but the public reception was not fiattering, in spite of the thirty-three performances which were given, and when they ceased, Hugo, disgusted at this lack of appreciation, resolved to end his career as a dramatic author. While Les Burgraves was a wonderful poem, it was at the same time a poor play. The indifference shown it by the general public, however, was merely a sign of the reaction against the excesses of the Romantic school, which was beginning to appear, and for which Hugo was perhaps the least to blame.

Duting the period which has just been under consideration, Hugo by no means confined himself to (Jramatic writing, for numerous volumes of poems, such as Les

Orientales (1829), Les Feuilles d^ Automne (1831), Les Chants du Crépuscule (1835), Les Voix Intérieures (1837), Rayons et Ombres (1840), to say nothing of Notre Dame de Paris ^ already mentioned, attest his constant activity. For the future, Hugo interested himself in politics, suffered exile during the reign of Napoleon III. , on account of offensive utterances concerning this aspirant for imperial honors, and returned in triumph after his dpwnfall, as an acknowledged champion of the people's liberties. This long period of political inactivity was filled with literary labors, however, for he wrote political satires in prose and verse, and composed several of the novels which have made him famous, among them being Les Misérables (1862).

Throughout all of his writings one is impressed with the immense personality of the man and his great love for the just and the right. Some one has said of him that he was a brother to all men, and a kind father to the weak and helpless. He was also a man who thought deeply and who was a perfect incarnation of Meditation. His judgment may have been at fault many times, and often he may have attempted to impose his will upon others by sheer force of personality, but no one ever questioned his entire sincerity, and the universal grief which was shown at his death in 1885 proved how near he was to the hearts of the people.

His chief literary merit is to be found in his poetry, for he was by far the greatest lyiic poet of the century in France, if not the greatest in the whole history of the literature. As a dramatist, he was the head and leader of thé revolt against the classic tradition, but

NOTES ON H^RNANI 39

can not be called a man of exceptional talent and ability in this line of work, although the five hundred and more performances which have been given of Hernani^ with more than half as many for Buy BlaSy show that his plays have remained in public favor.