3-070-980 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Victor Hugo, 1881. 'This renowned literary veteran of French lyric and dramatic romance, flavoured with political and social enthusiasm of the French Democratic ideal, has reached the eightieth year of his life, which is the occasion for a tribute of personal homage...[to] his character and genius...The Revolution, and its ideas of equality, the Empire with its martial adventures and glories, and the traditional sacredness of religious ideas and institutions, combined to impress his ardent imagination with a transcendental enthusiasm, which was soon captivated by the romantic school of literature...As a Parliamentary orator,...he frequently spoke in a strain of somewhat theatrical declamation. He was, however, a constant advocate of the abolition of capital punishment, and a leading member of the Peace Congress...when, in 1851, Louis Napoleon perpetrated the coup d'etat, Hugo was one of the Republicans who found themselves helpless to resist being...sent into exile...He returned to Paris in 1871, after the fall of the Empire, and was elected a member of the National Assembly...it is to be regretted that he has wasted so much power of language and force of passion in misconceived attempts to alter the practical conditions of social life'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.