Such then, with their faults and their signal excellences,
are the five great novels.
Romance is a language in which many persons learn to speak
with a certain appearance of fluency; but there are few who
can ever bend it to any practical need, few who can ever be
said to express themselves in it. It has become abundantly
plain in the foregoing examination that Victor Hugo occupies
a high place among those few. He has always a perfect
command over his stories; and we see that they are
constructed with a high regard to some ulterior purpose, and
that every situation is informed with moral significance and
grandeur. Of no other man can the same thing be said in the
same degree. His romances are not to be confused with "the
novel with a purpose" as familiar to the English reader: this
is generally the model of incompetence; and we see the moral
clumsily forced into every hole and corner of the story, or
thrown externally over it like a carpet over a railing. Now
the moral significance, with Hugo, is of the essence of the
romance; it is the organising principle. If you could
somehow despoil LES MISERABLES OR LES TRAVAILLEURS of their
distinctive lesson, you would find that the story had lost
its interest and the book was dead.
Having thus learned to subordinate his story to an idea, to
make his art speak, he went on to teach it to say things
heretofore unaccustomed.
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