pie  of  growth  that  carried  his  first  book  beyond  the
books  of  previous  writers,  carries  his  last  book  beyond
his  first.  And  just  as  the  most  imbecile  production
of  any  literary  age  gives  us  sometimes  the  very  clew  to
comprehension  we  have  sought  long  and  vainly  in
contemporary  masterpieces,  so  it  may  be  the  very  weak-
est of  an  author's  books  that,  coming  in  the  sequel  of
many  others,  enables  us  at  last  to  get  hold  of  what
underlies  the  whole  of  them — of  that  spinal  marrow
of  significance  that  unites  the  work  of  his  life  into
something  organic  and  rational.  This  is  what  has
been  done  by  Quatre  Vi7igt  Treize  for  the  earlier
romances  of  Victor  Hugo,  and,  through  them,  for  a
whole  division  of  modern  literature.  We  have  here
the  legitimate  continuation  of  a  long  and  living  literary
tradition  ;  and  hence,  so  far,  its  explanation.  When
many  lines  diverge  from  each  other  in  direction  so
slightly  as  to  confuse  the  eye,  we  know  that  we  have
only  to  produce  them  to  make  the  chaos  plain  :  this
is  continually  so  in  literary  history  ;  and  we  shall  best
understand  the  importance  of  Victor  Hugo's  romances
if  we  think  of  them  as  some  such  prolongation  of  one
of  the  main  lines  of  literary  tendency.
