He is very present in Moses' sad cry: "O Seigneur, j'ai vécu puissant et solitaire, Laissez-moi m'endormir du sommeil de la terre!" I seem to hear the plaint of his strong, sorely wounded self-esteem in Samson's outburst of wrath over Delilah's treachery (his Delilah being the great actress, Marie Dorval). Thrice already has he forgiven her, but she has been more ashamed than surprised at finding herself discovered and forgiven: "Car la bonté de l'Homme est forte et sa douceur Écrase, en l'absolvant, l'être faible et menteur." And I feel his stoicism, and at the same time read an apology for his unproductiveness, in those words in the poem on the wolf which dies without uttering a sound: "À voir ce que l'on fut sur terre et ce que l'on laisse, Seul le silence est grand, tout le reste est faiblesse." Granted that there is a little affected rigidity in this attitude of his, still it is his pride, his spiritual nobility, his desire to perpetuate in his poetry the purity and austerity of his spirit, which impel him to assume it. The poet who undertook the further development of Chénier's lyrical style was a man of different intellectual stamp from both him and De Vigny--a man intoxicated with self-confidence. Victor Hugo was three-and-twenty, "the bright dawn illumining his spring." In one of his poems ("À Mademoiselle J.," in _Chants du Crépuscule_) he has himself described the certainty of victory with which he made his début as a lyric poet: "Alors je disais aux étoiles: O mon astre, en vain tu te voiles. Je sais que tu brilles là-haut! Alors je disais à la rive: Vous êtes la gloire, et j'arrive. Chacun de mes jours est un flot! Je disais au bois: forêt sombre, J'ai comme toi des bruits sans nombre. À l'aigle: contemple mon front! Je disais aux coupes vidées: Je suis plein d'ardentes idées Dont les âmes s'enivreront! Alors, du fond de vingt calices, Rosée, amour, parfum, délices, Se répandaient sur mon sommeil; J'avais des fleurs plein mes corbeilles; Et comme un vif essaim d'abeilles Mes pensées volaient au soleil! La terre me disait: Poète! Le ciel me répétait: Prophète! Marche! parle! enseigne! bénis! Penche l'urne des chants sublimes! Verse aux vallons noirs comme aux cimes, Dans les aires et dans les nids!" Victor Hugo took the verse which André Chénier had created, that pellucid medium of pure beauty, and when he had breathed upon it, it gleamed with all the colours of the rainbow. Strangely enough it was again from Greece that the inspiration came; but this time from modern Greece. Under the impression produced by the Greek War of Liberation Hugo set to work to write his _Orientales_. But what a different use of language! The words painted; the words shone, "gilded by a sunbeam" like the beautiful Jewess of the poems; they sang, as if to a secret accompaniment of Turkish music.