UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
as a "fulgurant" harmony after the fashion of Beethoven. The slight sketch in eight lines of Matha in "Ratbert" resumes all the imaginable horror and loveliness of a wicked and beautiful woman; but Hugo does not make her open her lips to let out the foul talk or the saucy" smile of the common street. "La blonde fauve," all but naked among the piled-up roses, with feet dabbled in blood, and the laughter of hell itself on her rose-red mouth, is as horrible as any proper object of art can be; but she is not vile and intolerable as Vivien. I do not fear or hesitate to say on this occasion what I think and have always thought on this matter; for I trust to have shown before now that the poet in the sunshine of whose noble genius the men of my generation grew up and took delight has no more ardent or more loyal admirer than myself among the herd of imitative parasites and thievish satellites who grovel at his heels; that I need feel no apprehension of being placed "in the rank of verminous fellows" who let themselves out to lie for hatred or for hire—"qui quæstum non corporis sed animi sui faciunt," as Major Dalgetty might have defined them. Among these obscene vermin I do not hold myself liable to be classed; though I may be unworthy to express, however capable of feeling, the same abhorrence as the Quarterly reviewer of "Vivien" for the exhibition of the libidinous infirmity of unvenerable age. But these are not the grounds on which
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