But what was the result? Under their treatment, in the hands of Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, George Sand, Sainte-Beuve, real life was dissolved and disintegrated anew. In the hands of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas its extremes formed symmetrical contrasts, exactly as in classic tragedy. Order, moderation, aristocratic refinement, a transparent, severely simple style distinguished Nodier, Beyle, and Mérimée, exactly as they had done the classic authors of the eighteenth century. The light, free, airy fancy which intermingles all the most varied imaginations of the poetic mind, which unites near and far, to-day and hoary antiquity, the real and the impossible, in one and the same work, which combines the divine and the human, popular legend and profound allegory, making of them one great symbolic whole—this real romantic gift was not theirs. They never saw the dance of the elves, nor heard the thin, clear tones of their music floating across the meadows. Although Celts by birth, these men were Latins; they felt and wrote as Latins; and the word Latin is equivalent to classic. If we understand by Romanticism what is generally understood, that is, an overwhelming of the style by the subject-matter, contents uncontrolled by any laws of form, such as we have in the writings of Jean Paul and Tieck, and even in Shakespeare and Goethe (A Midsummer Night's Dream and the second part of Faust), then all the French Romanticists are classic writers—Mérimée, George Sand, Gautier, and even Victor Hugo himself. Hugo's romantic drama is as disintegrative, regular in construction, perspicuous, and eloquent as a tragedy of Corneille.
At the mention of this name my thoughts turn involuntarily and naturally from the characteristics common to the periods to the common characteristics of race. In Hugo, Corneille's apparent antagonist, Corneille lives again.
There are many veins in the French character. There is a vein of scepticism, jest, sarcasm—the line Montaigne, La Fontaine, Molière, Mathurin Régnier, Pierre Bayle, &c.; there is the true, thoroughbred Gallic vein—Rabelais, Diderot, Balzac; and amongst the rest there is the heroic vein, the vein of enthusiasm. It is this last which pulsates so strongly in Corneille; and in Victor Hugo the blood begins to course in it again. If we compare Hugo in his stateliness with other poets, we shall find that there is probably not one in the whole world whom he resembles so much as he does old Corneille. There is something Spanish about the French eloquence of both, and Spain had certainly made its impression on them both; in Corneille's case a literary impression, in Hugo's a personal, received in his childhood. The drama to which Corneille owes his fame is the Cid, in which a Spanish theme is treated in a Spanish spirit, in imitation of Spanish models. The drama which makes Hugo famous is Hernani, Spanish in its subject, and permeated by the spirit of Calderon's code of honour. But in both these dramas it is heroism pure and simple which is inculcated and exhibited. They are schools for heroes. It is not human nature in its manysidedness, but heroic human nature which Corneille represents; in Victor Hugo this same heroic human nature is merely symmetrically complemented by wildly passionate human nature.
Let us glance at this Hernani, round which the great conflict between the party of the future and the party of the past raged. The story of the first performance has often been told. Adherents of the old school listened at the doors during the rehearsals, and picked up single lines, which they caricatured; and a parody of the play was acted before the play itself. The author had a hard struggle with the censor; he had to fight for his play almost line by line. There was a long correspondence on the subject of the one line: "C'était d'un imprudent, seigneur roi de Castille, et d'un lâche." And the actors and actresses regarded the work with equal disfavour; only one of the company applied himself with goodwill to the study of his part. Hugo was determined to dispense with the paid claque, but he arranged to have three hundred places at his disposal for the first three nights. The most faithful of his followers, young men who, according to their own confession, spent their nights in writing "Vive Victor Hugo!" all over the arcade of the Rue de Rivoli, with no other aim than to annoy the respectable citizen, now enlisted a corps of young painters, architects, poets, sculptors, musicians, and printers, to whom Hugo gave the watchword Hierro, and who were prepared to present an iron front to the foe. The moment the curtain rose the storm burst, and every time the play was performed there was such an uproar in the theatre that it was with the greatest difficulty it could be acted to the end. A hundred evenings in succession was Hernani hissed, and a hundred evenings in succession was it received with storms of applause by young enthusiasts, who for their master's sake did not weary of listening to the same speeches evening after evening and defending them line by line against the hate, rage, envy, and superior power of his opponents. The fact may seem unimportant, yet it is worthy of observation, that France is the only country in which such esprit de corps, without the existence of any tangible corps, such unselfish devotion to the cause and honour of another, has ever been witnessed.
The enemy took boxes and left them unoccupied, in order that the newspapers might report an empty house; they turned their backs to the stage; they made disgusted grimaces, as if the play were more than they could stand; they affected to be absorbed in the newspapers; they slammed the box doors, or laughed loud and scornfully, or hooted and hissed and whistled; so that a resolute defence was absolutely necessary.
There is not an emotion in Hernani which is not strained to its extremest pitch. The hero is a noble-minded man of genius, the genius and noble-mindedness being of the type which exists in the imagination of a young man of twenty. His genius impels him to lead the life of a brigand chieftain, and out of pure high-mindedness and contempt for ordinary prudence he does the most foolish things—betrays himself, lets his mortal enemy escape, gives himself up again and again. As chieftain he exercises unbounded power over other men, but it seems to be his courage alone which gives him this, for all his actions are as unreasoning as a child's. Nevertheless there is life and reality in the play.
This noble and disinterested highwayman, who lives at war with society and is the leader of a band of faithful enthusiasts, reminds us of the poet himself, the literary outlaw, who filled pit and gallery with a band of young men quite as remarkable in appearance and attire as his brigand troop. Madame Hugo describes the contingent of spectators who appeared on the first evening in answer to her husband's invitation as "a troop of wild, extraordinary creatures, with beards and long hair, dressed in every fashion except that of the day—in woollen jerseys and Spanish cloaks, Robespierre waistcoats and Henry III. caps—displaying themselves in broad daylight at the doors of the theatre with the clothing of all ages and countries on their backs." Their frantic devotion to Hugo was as great as that of Hernani's band of robbers for its captain. They knew that Hugo had received an anonymous letter in which he was threatened with assassination "if he did not withdraw his filthy play," and, improbable as it was that the threat would be literally fulfilled, two of them accompanied him to and from the theatre every evening, though he and they lived in the farthest apart quarters of Paris.
Amongst Hugo's papers of this date there is a quaint note from the painter Charlet, which expresses the feelings of these youths.
"Four of my Janissaries offer me their strong arms. I send them to prostrate themselves at your feet, begging for four places for this evening, if it is not too late. I answer for my men; they are fellows who would gladly cut off heads for the sake of the wigs. I encourage them in this noble spirit, and do not let them go without my fatherly blessing. They kneel. I stretch out my hands and say: God protect you, young men! The cause is a good one; do your duty! They rise and I add: Now, my children, take good care of Victor Hugo. God is good, but He has so much to do that our friend must in the first instance rely upon us. Go, and do not put him you serve to shame.—Yours with life and soul,
"CHARLET."
Supported by such devoted enthusiasts as these in its struggle with fanatic opposition, romantic art stormed the enemy's first redoubt and won its first important victory.