Poems | Page 2

Old-Time Lay?Jersey?Then, most, I Smile?The Exile's Desire?The Refugee's Haven
VARIOUS PIECES.
To the Napoleon Column--Author of "Critical Essays"?Charity--Dublin University Magazine?Sweet Sister--Mrs. B. Somers?The Pity of the Angels?The Sower--Toru Dutt?Oh, Why not be Happy?--Leopold Wray?Freedom and the World?Serenade--Henry F. Chorley?An Autumnal Simile?To Cruel Ocean?Esmeralda in Prison?Lover's Song--Ernest Oswald Coe?A Fleeting Glimpse of a Village--Fraser's Magazine?Lord Rochester's Song?The Beggar's Quatrain--H.L.C., London Society?The Quiet Rural Church?A Storm Simile
DRAMATIC PIECES.
The Father's Curse--Fredk. L. Slous?Paternal Love--Fanny Kemble-Butler?The Degenerate Gallants--Lord F. Leveson Gower?The Old and the Young Bridegroom--Charles Sherry?The Spanish Lady's Love--C. Moir?The Lover's Sacrifice--Lord F. Leveson Gower?The Old Man's Love--C. Moir?The Roll of the De Silva Race--Lord F. Leveson Gower?The Lover's Colloquy--Lord F. Leveson Gower?Cromwell and the Crown--Leitch Ritchie?Milton's Appeal to Cromwell?First Love--Fanny Kemble-Butler?The First Black Flag--Democratic Review?The Son in Old Age--Foreign Quarterly Review?The Emperor's Return--Athenaum
Victor in Poesy, Victor in Romance,?Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears,?French of the French, and Lord of human tears;?Child-lover; Bard whose fame-lit laurels glance?Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance,?Beyond our strait, their claim to be thy peers;?Weird Titan by thy winter weight of years?As yet unbroken, Stormy voice of France!
TENNYSON.
MEMOIR OF
VICTOR MARIE HUGO.
Towards the close of the First French Revolution, Joseph Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, son of a joiner at Nancy, and an officer risen from the ranks in the Republican army, married Sophie Tr��buchet, daughter of a Nantes fitter-out of privateers, a Vendean royalist and devotee.
Victor Marie Hugo, their second son, was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besan?on, France. Though a weakling, he was carried, with his boy-brothers, in the train of their father through the south of France, in pursuit of Fra Diavolo, the Italian brigand, and finally into Spain.
Colonel Hugo had become General, and there, besides being governor over three provinces, was Lord High Steward at King Joseph's court, where his eldest son Abel was installed as page. The other two were educated for similar posts among hostile young Spaniards under stern priestly tutors in the Nobles' College at Madrid, a palace become a monastery. Upon the English advance to free Spain of the invaders, the general and Abel remained at bay, whilst the mother and children hastened to Paris.
Again, in a house once a convent, Victor and his brother Eug��ne were taught by priests until, by the accident of their roof sheltering a comrade of their father's, a change of tutor was afforded them. This was General Lahorie, a man of superior education, main supporter of Malet in his daring plot to take the government into the Republicans' hands during the absence of Napoleon I. in Russia. Lahorie read old French and Latin with Victor till the police scented him out and led him to execution, October, 1812.
School claimed the young Hugos after this tragical episode, where they were oddities among the humdrum tradesmen's sons. Victor, thoughtful and taciturn, rhymed profusely in tragedies, "printing" in his books, "Chateaubriand or nothing!" and engaging his more animated brother to flourish the Cid's sword and roar the tyrant's speeches.
In 1814, both suffered a sympathetic anxiety as their father held out at Thionville against the Allies, finally repulsing them by a sortie. This was pure loyalty to the fallen Bonaparte, for Hugo had lost his all in Spain, his very savings having been sunk in real estate, through King Joseph's insistence on his adherents investing to prove they had "come to stay."
The Bourbons enthroned anew, General Hugo received, less for his neutrality than thanks to his wife's piety and loyalty, confirmation of his title and rank, and, moreover, a fieldmarshalship. Abel was accepted as a page, too, but there was no money awarded the ex-Bonapartist--money being what the Eaglet at Reichstadt most required for an attempt at his father's throne--and the poor officer was left in seclusion to write consolingly about his campaigns and "Defences of Fortified Towns."
Decidedly the pen had superseded the sword, for Victor and Eug��ne were scribbling away in ephemeral political sheets as apprenticeship to founding a periodical of their own.
Victor's poetry became remarkable in _La Muse Fran?aise_ and _Le Conservateur Litt��raire_, the odes being permeated with Legitimist and anti-revolutionary sentiments delightful to the taste of Madam Hugo, member as she was of the courtly Order of the Royal Lily.
In 1817, the French Academy honorably mentioned Victor's "Odes on the Advantages of Study," with a misgiving that some elder hand was masked under the line ascribing "scant fifteen years" to the author. At the Toulouse Floral Games he won prizes two years successively. His critical judgment was sound as well, for he had divined the powers of Lamartine.
His "Odes," collected in a volume, gave his ever-active mother her opportunity at Court. Louis XVIII. granted the boy-poet a pension of 1,500 francs.
It was the windfall for which the youth had been waiting to enable him to gratify his first love. In his childhood, his father and