basis of German literature? What are the English poets of our own day? Inspired critics. What was Italy's noble Leopardi? A fiery critic. Amongst all the modern poets only two, Byron and Lamartine, have not been critics; and for this reason these two have lacked many-sidedness and variety and have become as monotonous as they are." When criticism is taken in a wider sense, in the full meaning of the word, this last limitation falls away. For in its signification of the power of passing judgment on the existing state of things, it was an inspiring force in all the great Romantic lyric writers of the period, Byron as well as Hugo, Lamartine as well as George Sand. From the moment when their poetry ceases to exclude all important contemporary life and thought, from the moment when the Romantic lyric poets transform themselves into the organs of great ideas, criticism becomes an inspiring principle in their works also. It inspired Hugo's Les Châtiments; it inspired Byron's Don Juan. It is a finger-post on the path of the human mind. It plants hedges and lights torches along that path. It cuts and clears new tracks. For it is criticism which removes mountains-the mountains of belief in authority, of prejudice, of idealess power and dead tradition.

XXXII

THE DRAMA: VITET, DUMAS, DE VIGNY, HUGO

THE success of the Romantic School in lyric poetry, fiction, and criticism was indisputable; but there was one branch of literature in which it failed to realise the bold expectations with which it started on its career; and this was the branch which, according to the old principles of æsthetics, was (and curiously enough, as a rule, still is) regarded as the highest, namely, the drama. As the art stood in such high estimation, the comparative slightness of their success in it was painfully felt by the Romanticists. Their plays never found real favour with the public, never became part of the permanent repertory of any theatre. Victor Hugo's were only popular as librettos for Italian operas; Mérimée's were never played at all; George Sand's and Balzac's had generally only a succès d'estime; and it was long before a few of Alfred de Musset's short pieces found their way on to the stage; whereas Scribe and his collaborators drew full houses, not only in France but abroad.

And yet the school did much admirable work in the domain of drama. The first essay was made by Vitet, who between 1826 and 1829 wrote a succession of Scènes dramatiques, subsequently published in a collected form under the title of La Ligue. The original idea had suggested itself to him of dramatising episodes in French history without adding anything fictitious whatever; his imagination was allowed to do nothing but vitalise history, and it succeeded most admirably in doing so. The atmosphere of Vitet's works is the atmosphere of long-past days, and the talk of his sixteenth-century characters conveys such an impression of authenticity that we feel when we are reading his dramas as if we were living history, hour by hour.

Ludovic Vitet was born in Paris in 1802, received his education at the École Normale, took part as a Liberal in the political movements of the day, was a member of the society Aide toi-le ciel t'aidera, and wrote (as already mentioned) in the Globe as an ardent champion of Romanticism. His poetico-historical works were all produced in this youthful period, with the exception of a series of dramatic scenes, distinctly inferior to the rest, which he published in 1849 under the title of Les États d'Orléans.

His career was uneventful. As a young man he was an inseparable friend of Count Duchâtel. When the Revolution of July placed his friends in power and Duchâtel became a member of the Guizot ministry, Vitet was made Inspector of Historical Monuments, a post which Guizot devised specially for him. Henceforth he was a politician; in 1834 he became a member of the Chamber of Deputies, in 1836 a member of the Council of State, in 1846 a Member of the Academy.

He was a consistent Monarchist and Conservative. From 1851 to 1871 he held aloof from public affairs altogether. After the war he again took a prominent position, under Thiers. He died in 1873.

Vitet furnishes a good example of the power of the first impetus of a strong artistic movement to inspire even minds. which are not productive and artistic by nature. After 1830 he was eminent only as a learned historian of art. He wrote a biography of Count Duchâtel. His literary and historical essays are as dry and tedious as Mérimée's.

To his youthful works we always return with pleasureto Les Barricades, Les États de Blois, and La Mort de Henri III. The principal characters in them, Henri II., Henri III., and the Dukes of Guise of several successive generations, are portrayed in such masterly style as to bear comparison with the heroes of Shakespeare's great historical plays (Henry IV. and Richard III. certainly excepted). The manners and ideas of the age are so clearly placed before us that we feel as if they cannot have been better known or understood by contemporaries. Les États de Blois is unmistakably the finest of these works. Let any one who wishes to

make acquaintance with Vitet at his best, read the scenes which describe the murder of the Duke of Guise. Seldom has an author ventured to set aside poetic convention to such an extent in a historical play. The event is much more vividly and realistically brought before us than even in Delaroche's fine painting, which shows us Henri III. cautiously opening the door and peeping at the body of his great enemy lying on the floor. Vitet first shows us the King in his room at four o'clock in the morning, dipping Spanish poniards into holy water and tremblingly handing them to his minions without even daring to utter his enemy's name. Then comes the scene in the Duke's room, in which his mother and his mistress in vain beseech him not to imperil his life, but to keep away from the Council to be held next morning. We next see him in the Councilchamber; an uncomfortable feeling comes over him; his nose begins to bleed; he has forgotten his handkerchief, and sends a messenger to fetch it. The Scottish guards stupidly bar this messenger's way; but they quickly perceive their mistake, and the Duke gets the handkerchief. But he is uneasy, this great soldier who has faced drawn blades so often without turning pale, and he begins to feel faint. It is because he is still fasting; the feeling will pass off if he eats something; he opens the little bonbonnière which hangs at his belt; it is empty. Some one is despatched to fetch him sweetmeats or fruit. At this moment Révol comes out of the King's apartment and says: "The King wishes to speak with you, Monseigneur ! The other lords of the Council stop their conversation and exchange glances. The Duke rises; he takes a little time to fasten his mantle, which slips first off one shoulder, then off the other; he is unconsciously trying to delay his departure-too proud not to be ready to go, even if it be to death, and yet human enough to hesitate a moment on the fatal threshold. He must have another handkerchief, as the first is stained with blood; again one of the conspirators goes, leaving the others in anxious suspense. It is a masterly representation, this of Vitet's, of the restlessness, impatience, and foolish feeling of shame which at times overcome us and impel us to rush

blindly into the most hazardous situations, merely to escape from painfully ridiculous ones. The messenger sent for the handkerchief again delays. Then the proud Guise loses patience. With the words, "I cannot keep the King waiting longer," he goes out at the door; as it closes behind him, a dozen officers thrust their long poniards into his body.

We observe that Vitet enters into details which would be unsuitable for the stage. His Scènes dramatiques are only intended to be read. Therefore they are not genuine dramas. And the explanation of this is, that Vitet, with all his historical insight, lacked both poetic passion and the artistic gift of organisation. Because he is never capable of developing pathos, of rising to a climax, from the height of which all the rest would be felt to be preparation and result, he never attains to really artistic construction. He was evidently haunted by a species of artistic anxiety, a fear of making the slightest alteration in the historical facts, a fear of obtruding his own personality. He had not a strong enough individuality to dare to issue an artistic coinage stamped with his own image. His productivity ceased as early as it did, because the imagination which inspired his works, though vigorous, was not free, not independent, either in its observation or in its reproduction; it was hampered and weighted by scholarship, by the dust of the record office. This beautiful and fiery Pegasus stood tethered in a library.

It would be a shame to employ the same metaphor in writing of the Romantic author who, following in Vitet's steps, set himself to dramatise historical episodes, and who in February 1829, a year before Victor Hugo, achieved popularity with a historical drama, Henri III. et sa Cour. This writer was Alexandre Dumas (born in 1803), a man of brilliant, spontaneous talent and Titanic constitution, who displayed the same aptitude for Herculean tasks in literature as his father had done in war. For forty years he continued without a pause to produce tragedies, comedies, novels, short stories, books of travel, and memoirs. It would be foolish to write contemptuously of such prodigious inventiveness, such incredible productivity. We