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He was ecstatic, unmeasured, a reckless improvisatore. In his ideas he was preposterously humanitarian; a prodigious worker, his vigor of mind seemed never exhausted by his labors; in theory an idealist, in his private life he was charged with being scandalously sensual.
The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intellects of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems as marvellous as the performance of an Italian Improvisatore.
In so far as in his 'Improvisatore, in 'O. T., and in 'Only a Fiddler, he represents not only himself, in his own separate individuality, but at the same time the momentous combat which so many have to pass through, and which he understands so well, because in it his own life has developed itself; therefore in no instance can he be said to present to the reader what belongs to the world of illusion, but only that which bears witness to truth, and which, as is the case with all such testimony, has a universal and enduring worth.
It is at this season, too, that the pizzicarolo shops are gayly dressed in the manner so graphically described by Hans Andersen in his "Improvisatore." No wonder, that, to little Antonio, the interior of one of these shops looked like a realization of Paradise; for they are really splendid; and when glittering with candles and lamps at night, the effect is very striking.
But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the ennui which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a metaphysical German student. Take another verse "Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon."
In fact, you could observe, in spite of his sleepless intellectual vivacity, he was not properly a thinker at all; his faculties were of the active, not of the passive or contemplative sort. A brilliant improvisatore; rapid in thought, in word and in act; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating of men.
His felicities of diction in the great passages seem little short of miraculous, and they are so many that it is easy to understand why he is so often spoken of as being a kind of inspired improvisatore.
He forms, indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is invited as a sort of improvisatore; but the esteem they concede to him is only a part of the system of politeness; and should he be dull in discovering the favourite quality of their self-love, or in participating in their volatile tastes, he will find frequent opportunities of observing, with the sage at the court of Cyprus, that "what he knows is not proper for this place, and what is proper for this place he knows not."
"Decidedly!" said St. Anthony. "St. John, you remember our party to Paestum with Lady Calabria M'Crater and the Marquis of Agrigentum. It was nothing to this! Nothing! Do you know I thought that rather dull." "Yes, too elaborate; too highly finished; nothing of the pittore improvisatore. A party of this kind should be more sketchy in its style; the outline more free, and less detail."
One monthly critical journal even complained that a young author who had just published a work like the Improvisatore, should immediately come out with anything so childish as the tales. I reaped a harvest of blame, precisely where people ought to have acknowledged the advantage of my mind producing something in a new direction.
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