Victor Hugo

Hugo was insulted by the most powerful critics in France. He put into the preface of a play "his sling and his stone" by which others might slay "the classical Goliath."

(Victor Hugo born Feb. 26, 1802.)

Vol. 39 pp. 337-349 of The Harvard Classics

Preface to Cromwell

¹ THE DRAMA contained in the following pages has nothing to commend it to the attention or the good will of the public. It has not, to attract the interest of political disputants, the advantage of the veto of the official censorship, nor even, to win for it at the outset the literary sympathy of men of taste, the honour of having been formally rejected by an infallible reading committee.