is certain:  that at times the splendid utterance does indeed grow transfused with a pure and inward beauty, when the human frailties vanish, and all is subdued and glorified by the high purposes of art.  Such passages are to be found among the lyrics of Les Feuilles d’Automne, Les Rayons et Les Ombres, Les Contemplations, in the brilliant descriptions and lofty imagery of La Legende des Siecles, in the burning invective of Les Chatiments.  None but a place among the most illustrious could be given to the creator of such a stupendous piece of word-painting as the description of the plain of Waterloo in the latter volume, or of such a lovely vision as that in La Legende des Siecles, of Ruth looking up in silence at the starry heaven.  If only the wondrous voice had always spoken so!

* * * * *

The romantic love of vastness, richness, and sublimity, and the romantic absorption in the individual—­these two qualities appear in their extremes throughout the work of Hugo:  in that of ALFRED DE VIGNY it is the first that dominates; in that of ALFRED DE MUSSET, the second.  Vigny wrote sparingly—­one or two plays, a few prose works, and a small volume of poems; but he produced some masterpieces.  A far more sober artist than Hugo, he was also a far profounder thinker, and a sincerer man.  His melancholy, his pessimism, were the outcome of no Byronic attitudinizing, but the genuine intimate feelings of a noble spirit; and he could express them in splendid verse.  His melancholy was touched with grandeur, his pessimism with sublimity.  In his Moise, his Colere de Samson, his Maison du Berger, his Mont des Oliviers, and others of his short reflective poems, he envisions man face to face with indifferent Nature, with hostile Destiny, with poisoned Love, and the lesson he draws is the lesson of proud resignation.  In La Mort du Loup, the tragic spectacle of the old wolf driven to bay and killed by the hunters inspires perhaps his loftiest verses, with the closing application to humanity—­’Souffre et meurs sans parler’—­summing up his sad philosophy.  No less striking and beautiful are the few short stories in his Servitude et Grandeur Militaires, in which some heroic incidents of military life are related in a prose of remarkable strength and purity.  In the best work of Vigny there are no signs of the strain, the over-emphasis, the tendency towards the grotesque, always latent in Romanticism; its nobler elements are alone preserved; he has achieved the grand style.

Alfred de Musset presents a complete contrast.  He was the spoilt child of the age—­frivolous, amorous, sensuous, charming, unfortunate, and unhappy; and his poetry is the record of his personal feelings, his varying moods, his fugitive loves, his sentimental despairs.

    Le seul bien qui me reste au monde
    Est d’avoir quelquefois pleure,