Note M — The Legend of the Ages[M]

English poetry of the last eighty years is fine in quality and great in volume, but it would be difficult to maintain that it is the finest and greatest poetry of the period. It was France that produced the master-singer, and with rare generosity both Tennyson and Swinburne acknowledged that Victor Hugo was their superior. The range of power of the Frenchman was marvellous; he was a great novelist, a great playwright, a great political writer; but, above all, he was a poet. His immense force of imagination and narrative power is displayed at its best in "The Legend of the Ages" ("La Légende des Siécles"). The first part appeared in 1859, the second in 1877, and the last in 1883. It consists of a series of historical and philosophic poems, in which the story of the human race is depicted in the lightning flashes of a resplendent imagination. Some of the poems, given here for the first time in English, contain stories as fine as the masterpieces of the great novelists.