A French Romanticist

VICTOR HUGO is the one great figure of French literature whose name deserves a ranking with Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. It was very much to be expected that the French who have contributed notable biographies in the modern manner on the outstanding literary men of other nations should at last do justice to their own Romantic genius. The volume has been well received in Paris and it is to be concluded that it is for Hugo's compatriots an altogether satisfactory up-to-the-minute estimate. That it is equally agreeable to the American temper seems to this reviewer very doubtful.

M. Escholier puts in this edition a special bid for the American trade when he plays up to its full value the Hugo-Lincoln story. This attempt in no way succeeds in over-balancing the florid enthusiasm which runs through the pages like a great exotic weed, and is very annoying to those who would wade through the tropical growth of bubbling Gallic lack of restraint. In contrast to the precision of other French prose, this translated outburst of M. Escholier indicates that, like the little girl who is very good, French writing when it is bad, is horrid.