BY VICTOR HUGO.

(1827)[A] 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.
It presents itself, therefore, to the public gaze, naked and friendless, like the infirm man of the Gospel--_solus, pauper, nudus_.
Not without some hesitation, moreover, did the author determine to burden his drama with a preface.

Such things are usually of very little interest to the reader.

He inquires concerning the talent of a writer rather than concerning his point of view; and in determining whether a work is good or bad, it matters little to him upon what ideas it is based, or in what sort of mind it germinated.