more intelligently the responsibilities of his place in
society. And in all this generalisation of interest, we
never miss those small humanities that are at the opposite
pole of excellence in art; and while we admire the intellect
that could see life thus largely, we are touched with another
sentiment for the tender heart that slipped the piece of gold
into Cosette's sabot, that was virginally troubled at the
fluttering of her dress in the spring wind, or put the blind
girl beside the deformity of the laughing man. This, then,
is the last praise that we can award to these romances. The
author has shown a power of just subordination hitherto
unequalled; and as, in reaching forward to one class of
effects, he has not been forgetful or careless of the other,
his work is more nearly complete work, and his art, with all
its imperfections, deals more comprehensively with the
materials of life than that of any of his otherwise more sure
and masterly predecessors.

These five books would have made a very great fame for any
writer, and yet they are but one facade of the monument that
Victor Hugo has erected to his genius. Everywhere we find
somewhat the same greatness, somewhat the same infirmities.
In his poems and plays there are the same unaccountable
protervities that have already astonished us in the romances.
There, too, is the same feverish strength, welding the fiery
iron of his idea under forge-hammer repetitions - an emphasis
that is somehow akin to weaknesses - strength that is a
little epileptic. He stands so far above all his
contemporaries, and so incomparably excels them in richness,
breadth, variety, and moral earnestness, that we almost feel