our hands: the conscientious reader feels a sort of disgrace
in the very reading. For such artistic falsehoods, springing
from what I have called already an unprincipled avidity after
effect, no amount of blame can be exaggerated; and above all,
when the criminal is such a man as Victor Hugo. We cannot
forgive in him what we might have passed over in a third-rate
sensation novelist. Little as he seems to know of the sea
and nautical affairs, he must have known very well that
vessels do not go down as he makes the "Ourque" go down; he
must have known that such a liberty with fact was against the
laws of the game, and incompatible with all appearance of
sincerity in conception or workmanship.

(1) Prefatory letter to PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.

In each of these books, one after another, there has been
some departure from the traditional canons of romance; but
taking each separately, one would have feared to make too
much of these departures, or to found any theory upon what
was perhaps purely accidental. The appearance of QUATRE
VINGT TREIZE has put us out of the region of such doubt.
Like a doctor who has long been hesitating how to classify an
epidemic malady, we have come at last upon a case so well
marked that our uncertainty is at an end. It is a novel
built upon "a sort of enigma," which was at that date laid
before revolutionary France, and which is presented by Hugo
to Tellmarch, to Lantenac, to Gauvain, and very terribly to
Cimourdain, each of whom gives his own solution of the
question, clement or stern, according to the temper of his
spirit. That enigma was this: "Can a good action be a bad