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seek among the ruins of the past those forgotten springs where of old the majestic winged horse of Shakespeare once quenched his immortal thirst. Whether it is that those ancient springs, half ruined and half bogged, no longer supply pure draughts, it is enough to say that Victor Hugo's dramatic poems contain more of the turbid mud than of the reviving spirit of the old English Hippocrene there is wanting in them its joyous brightness and harmonious health ; and I must confess I am often seized with the dreadful thought that this Victor Hugo is the ghost of some English poet of the golden age of Elizabeth, a dead poet who has risen from his grave in an ill-temper to write some posthumous works in a time and country where he will be safe from competition with the great William. 1 In truth, Victor Hugo reminds me of such people as Marlow, Decker, or Heywood, who in language and manner were so much like their great contemporary, and only lacked his deep perception and sense of beauty, his terrible and laughing grace, his revealing mission from nature. And, ah ! to all the short- comings of Marlow, Decker, and Heywood there is in Victor Hugo the saddest want of all that of 1 Can it be that the well-known French expression "le grand Williams," attributed to Janin, originated in some recollec- tion of Heine's German phrase, " dcr Konkurrenz des grosscn Williams " T The genitive may possibly have been taken for a nominative. Translator.