After winning prizes for their poems in Paris and at Toulouse, the three brothers, with the view of earning a living, started a literary periodical (in 1819). Chateaubriand was at this time editing the extreme Conservative newspaper _Le Conservateur_. The brothers named their venture _Le Conservateur littéraire_, and Chateaubriand gave it a warm welcome. The new periodical came out twice a month until March 1821, and Victor Hugo alone supplied more poems and articles than all the other contributors together. In _Le Conservateur littéraire_ are already to be found some of his most famous odes--_Les Vierges de Verdun_, the odes on the fate of La Vendée, on the death of the Duke of Berri, on the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux, and the beautiful, more personal song of rejoicing on the occasion of the restoration of the statue of Henry IV. And in it we also find, to the number of over a hundred, his first essays in criticism, of which only a few, and these much tampered with, have been included in the collection entitled _Littérature et Philosophie mêlées_. At this period poetry is to Victor Hugo the daughter of religion. Apropos of an ode on the existence of God, he writes: "The desire to thank a bountiful God in language worthy of Him begat poetry. From its birth it shared in the triumphs of religion, which united the earliest societies and began the civilisation of the world. At the present day, when, in order to demolish society, men attack religion, the only bridle upon man, the only lasting tie which holds societies together, it is not surprising that they should seek to make an ally of poetry. But the divine muse does not allow herself to be inspired by that which is nought." And at this period, too, he proclaims the superiority of Corneille and Racine to Shakespeare and Schiller: "We have never understood the difference alleged to exist between classic and romantic art. Shakespeare's and Schiller's dramas differ from Corneille's and Racine's only in being more faulty." The first edition of Victor Hugo's _Odes_ appeared in 1822. Louis XVIII., who read them over and over again, settled an annuity of 1000 francs a year on the poet out of his private purse; in the following year the Ministry of the Interior conferred on him a pension of 2000 francs; and in 1826 the King, on being applied to, increased the amount of his yearly grant. The King had good reason to show approval, for these first poems of Victor Hugo contain the whole system of orthodox political and religious principles valid under the Bourbon monarchy. They are a faithful image of the period during which they were written.