Victor Hugo, a politician, one of the most prominent living French
writers, was born February 26, 1802. The political contrariety which
has marked his career may be said to have been inherited by Hugo, his
father having been one of the first volunteers of the republic, and
his mother, a Vendéan by birth and sentiment, a proscribed royalist,
wandering while yet a girl in the Bocage of La Vendée. At the date of
his birth, his father was a colonel in the army of Napoleon; and the
child, born almost amid the roar of cannon, followed with its mother
the steps of Bonaparte. From Besancon he was carried to Elba, from
Elba to Paris, from Paris to Rome, from Rome to Naples, before he was
five years of age, so that he exclaims, ‘I made the tour of Europe
before I began to live.’ In Naples he resided about ten years, his
father having been appointed governor of Avellino. In 1809 he returned
to France with his two brothers and his mother, by whom he was
educated within the walls of the convent of the Feuillantes, where the
family had taken up its residence. He here received the benefit of
classical instruction from an old general, whom his mother was then
concealing from the imperial police. At the close of 1811, his father,
then a general and majordomo of Joseph Bonaparte’s palace at Madrid,
sent for his family to join him in that capital, and Victor
accompanied his mother to Spain. He remained at Madrid about a year,
and returned to the old convent until the restoration of 1814. This
event, by exciting in his mother and father the opposite feelings of
joy and indignant grief, led to their separation. Victor was placed by
his father in a private academy, where he studied mathematics, it is
said with great success, previous to his intended removal to the
polytechnic school. In 1816 he published his parable of ‘The Rich and
Poor,’ and an elegy called the ‘Canadian.’ In 1817 he was a competitor
for a prize on the ‘Advantages of Study,’ offered by the academy. In
1819, having committed himself to a literary career with his father’s
consent, he wrote two odes, entitled ‘The Virgins of Verdun,’ and ‘The
Restoration of the Statue of Henri IV,’ and sent them to the Academy
of Floral Fêtes, at Toulouse, by which they were both crowned. In 1820
he published his ‘Infant Moses in the Nile.’ In 1822 appeared the
first volume of his ‘Odes and Ballads,’ a collection of occasional
pieces, all breathing a royalist spirit. His ‘Hans of Iceland,’ and
‘Bug-Jargal,’ though not published until some years later, were
written about this time. Before the close of the same year the young
poet married Mdlle. Foucher, and rising into distinction as a royalist
writer, he received a pension from Louis XVIII. In 1826 he published a
second volume of ‘Odes and Ballads,’ which betrayed an inward
revolution in his political and literary opinions. In the succeeding
year he composed a drama, called ‘Cromwell,’ intended to assert the
freedom of the Christian and romantic drama, against the theory of
Aristotle’s unity, as understood and practiced by Racine. He prefaced
it with a dramatic theory of his own, to which, however, he hardly
gave a fair chance of success, since its accompanying illustration
contained scarcely a feature of merit. In 1828 he published his
‘Orientals,’ a poem of finished versification, but destitute of force
or spirit. In 1829, Victor Hugo published his ‘Last Days of a
Condemned Prisoner,’ and so vividly depicted the anticipated tortures
of a man left for execution, that the terrific interest of the work
gave it an immense success. Hugo now prepared to make a second attack
on the stiff and unnatural dramatic system prevalent in his country.
On the 26th February, 1830, his ‘Ernani’ was played at the Théâtre
Français. The indignation of the old and the enthusiasm of the new
party knew no bounds. The academy went so far as to lay a complaint
against the innovation at the foot of the throne, but Charles X, with
a good sense which would have been very serviceable to him four months
later, replied, that ‘in matters of art he was no more than a private
person.’ Meanwhile the drama, which was far superior in construction
to ‘Cromwell,’ succeeded. Shortly after the revolution of July, his
‘Marion de Lorme,’ embodying his new political tastes, and which had
been suppressed by the censorship under the restoration, was brought
out, and was considered theatrically successful. In January, 1832, his
play, ‘Le Roi S’amuse,’ was performed at the Théâtre Français, and the
next day interdicted by the government. This was scarcely necessary,
the piece had not been warmly received; in fact, people, however
willing to be amused, especially at the expense of monarchs, did not
like to see the quondam royalist employed in burlesquing the
historical heroes of their country. M. Hugo afterward published a
number of dramatic pieces of various merit; among them are ‘Lucrèce
Borgia,’ ‘Marie Tudor,’ ‘Angelo,’ and ‘Ruy Blas.’ His greatest novel
is ‘Nôtre Dame de Paris.’ He has since produced ‘Chants du
Creépuscle,’ and ‘Voix Intérieures.’ In the works of this poet may be
found some of the sublimest creations of French poetry. It is to be
regretted that, side by side with these, the author’s preverted taste
led him to place images the most monstrous and disgusting. He was
created a peer of France by Louis Philippe, and, on the downfall of
that monarch, avowing the principles of the revolution, was returned
to the constituent, and afterward to the national assembly, of which
he was one of the few eloquent speakers. He is also a leading member
of the Peace Congress, and was its president in 1849――a position
remarkable enough for the author of the bellicose ‘Lettres du Rhin.’
He was an energetic opponent of Louis Napoleon in December, and on
that account was compelled to fly to Brussels in an assumed name.