d'Automne" and "Les Chants du Crépuscule" I remember nothing. Ten lines,
fifty lines of "Les Légendes des Siècles," and I always think that it is
the greatest poetry I have ever read, but after a few pages the book is
laid down and forgotten. Having composed more verses than any man that
ever lived, Hugo can only be taken in the smallest doses; if you repeat
any passage to a friend across a _café_ table, you are both appalled by
the splendour of the imagery, by the thunder of the syllables.

"Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été
Avait en s'en allant négligemment jeté
Cette faucille d'or dans les champs des étoiles."

But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the
_ennui_ which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or
Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's
genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a
metaphysical German student. Take another verse--

"Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon."

Without a "like" or an "as," by a mere statement of fact, the picture,
nay more, the impression, is produced. I confess I have a weakness for
the poem which this line concludes--"La fête chez Thérèse"; but
admirable as it is with its picture of mediæval life, there is in it, as
in all Hugo's work, a sense of fabrication that dries up emotion in my
heart. He shouts and raves over poor humanity, while he is gathering
coppers for himself; he goes in for an all-round patronage of the
Almighty in a last stanza; but of the two immortalities he evidently
considers his own the most durable; he does not, however, become really
intolerable until he gets on the subject of little children, he sings