PREFACE.
1: poëte mort. In the volume entitled «Littérature et Philosophie mêlées» of the édition définitive, Hugo has an article «sur M. Dovalle», which contains this quotation. Charles Dovalle, born 1807, killed in a duel 1829, was the author of a volume of poetry, «Le Sylphe», which appeared in 1830, with a preface by Hugo.
2: censure. During the Revolution all restrictions upon the liberty of the press were removed, but in 1810 a directorship was established. The charter of Louis XVIII in 1814 restored full liberty, but restrictions were presently imposed, nevertheless. In 1819 the censorship gave place to a system of sureties. An ordinance of St. Cloud, in 1830, suspending the liberty of the press was one of the causes of the revolution in that year, and the restrictions were temporarily removed. Since then a limited censorship has generally been maintained, but chiefly in regard to politics and criminal processes.
3: règles de d'Aubignac. François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac (1604-1676), was an authoritative literary critic, champion of Aristotle and the three unities, author of a prose tragedy, Zénobie, composed according to these rules and very stupid, and of a «Pratique du Théâtre». He was a bitter opponent of Corneille.
4: Cujas (1522-1590), a celebrated jurist of Toulouse, who interpreted the Roman law in a more historical and less practical sense than had been usual in France. His name thus stands for legal pedantry. Coutumes means legal usages, unwritten law.
5: Ni talons rouges, ni bonnets rouges. To wear red heels was a privilege of aristocracy under the ancien régime, and the bonnet rouge was the liberty cap adopted as a head-dress by the Revolutionists.
6: L'autre Saint Office, the Inquisition.
7: Romancero general, a collection of Spanish ballads, first published under this name in 1604 and 1605. They were taken for the most part, however, from song-books of the previous century, especially a Cancionero general of 1511, and a Cancionero de romances of 1555. But Hugo derived little from the Romancero general except the spirit of chivalry with which his drama is imbued.
8: The absurdly rigid critics of Corneille's day (1606-1684) found fault even with the «Cid» for not being sufficiently classical; Corneille himself called «Don Sanche» une comédie héroïque, and was at great pains to defend it as un poème d'une espèce nouvelle, et qui n'a point d'exemple chez les anciens. «Nicomède» gave him the same misgivings, and Voltaire, the most meticulous of critics, charged it with being trop vulgaire, trop populaire.
9: Bourges. The cathedral of Bourges, a small city in central France, is one of the most sincere and impressive monuments of Gothic architecture. Its massiveness and originality atone easily for the incongruities of its style.
10: PENDANT OPERA INTERRUPTA, Virgil, AEneid, iv. 88.