That Madame de Staël, Madame de Girardin, Daniel Stern, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Flaubert, Gautier are among the authors whose works have been selected will leave no doubt as to the literary excellence of the texts included in this series.

The historical colour of Ruy Blas is said to be based on two French books, carelessly consulted, yet of Ruy Blas M. Paul de Saint-Victor, after making a close study of the period, wrote: 'Ce fragment de siècle que je venais d'exhumer de tant de recherches, je le retrouvais, vivant et mouvant, dans l'harmonie d'un drame admirable.

[Footnote 3: Quoted in Eugène Rigal's Victor Hugo, poète épique.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Victor-Marie Hugo, son of an officer in Napoleon's army, was born at Besançon on February 26, 1802.

Then for three years the family was in Paris and Victor got a little education in a small school.

At Madrid they were sent to a school kept by Priests where Victor was not very happy, and from which he got small profit.

It has been thought that the subject of this poem was suggested to Victor Hugo by a passage in Les tragiques, a satirical poem in seven books, depicting the misfortunes and vices of France, written by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné (1551-1630), whom Sainte-Beuve calls the Juvenal of the sixteenth century.

Edmond Huguet (Les Sens de la Forme dans les Métaphores de Victor Hugo) gives the following examples: 'De la hauteur où je suis, la rade pleine de nacelles (à quatre rames)

Léon Gautier indeed, in Les Épopées françaises, says: `Victor Hugo s'est proposé de traduire notre vieux poème, dont il avait sans doute quelque texte sous les yeux.'

C'est ce qu'a bien compris Victor Hugo, qui a si fidèlement

Sir G.Young in his Poems from Victor Hugo suggests that Corbus may stand for Cottbus, the capital of Old or Lower Lusatia.

Victor Hugo's father was an officer in the army of the great Napoleon and fought in Spain as a general, but nothing is known of this incident except what is here told.

Compare the following passages, for most of which I am indebted to Edmond Huguet's Métaphores et comparaisons dans l'oeuvre de Victor Hugo: La ronce, le serpent, tord sur lui ses anneaux.

In Victor Hugo the word denotes, not so much destiny, as the feeling or the doctrine that man is the helpless victim of an unseen and cruel power.

See note under PUISSANCE ÉGALE BONTÉ. BIBLIOGRAPHY I. WORKS OF VICTOR HUGO.

Extraits de la correspondance de Victor Hugo.

Articles on Victor Hugo.

Discours sur la vie littéraire de Victor Hugo.

La Vérité sur Victor Hugo.

MADAME VICTOR HUGO.

Victor Hugo, raconté par un témoin de sa vie.

PAUL DE SAINT-VICTOR.

Victor Hugo, l'homme et le poète.

Victor Hugo, le Poète et le philosophe.

Conférences sur Victor Hugo.