In short, his passion is
grandeur, his fault is excess; his distinguishing mark is a kind of
Titanic power with strange dissonances of puerility in its magnificence.
Where he is weakest is, in measure, taste, and sense of humor: he fails
in _esprit_, in the subtlest sense of the word. Victor Hugo is a
gallicized Spaniard, or rather he unites all the extremes of south and
north, the Scandinavian and the African. Gaul has less part in him than
any other country. And yet, by a caprice of destiny, he is one of the
literary geniuses of France in the nineteenth century! His resources are
inexhaustible, and age seems to have no power over him. What an infinite
store of words, forms, and ideas he carries about with him, and what a
pile of works he has left behind him to mark his passage! His eruptions
are like those of a volcano; and, fabulous workman that he is, he goes
on forever raising, destroying, crushing, and rebuilding a world of his
own creation, and a world rather Hindoo than Hellenic.
He amazes me: and yet I prefer those men of genius who awaken in me the
sense of truth, and who increase the sum of one's inner liberty. In Hugo
one feels the effort of the laboring Cyclops; give me rather the
sonorous bow of Apollo, and the tranquil brow of the Olympian Jove.
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