The first edition of Victor Hugo's _Odes_ appeared in 1822. Louis XVIII., who read them over and over again, settled an annuity of 1000 francs a year on the poet out of his private purse; in the following year the Ministry of the Interior conferred on him a pension of 2000 francs; and in 1826 the King, on being applied to, increased the amount of his yearly grant.
The King had good reason to show approval, for these first poems of Victor Hugo contain the whole system of orthodox political and religious principles valid under the Bourbon monarchy. They are a faithful image of the period during which they were written.
They pass in review the history of France from 1789 to 1825. In those of them which treat of the Revolution we observe, as in the corresponding poems by Lamartine, that two words occur more frequently than any others--executioners and victims. In the history of the Revolution Hugo sees nothing else. For its leading spirits he has but this one designation--executioners; the Convention he describes as a creation of the devil (livre i. ode 4); and, little as he loves heathen mythology, he cannot resist using the expression, _Hydra_ of anarchy, when he wishes to depict the horrors of the revolutionary period. For the enemies of the Revolution victims is the stereotyped designation; the revolt of La Vendée is eulogised in every second poem, and odes are addressed to its heroes and heroines (_La Vendée, Quiberon, Mlle. Sombreuil_). The guillotine is always present to the poet's imagination, and is the constant object of his anathemas, except when, as in the ode _Le Dévouement_ (livre iv. ode 4), he is carried away to the extent of desiring martyrdom for himself, "because the martyrs' angel is the most beautiful of all the angels who bear the souls of men to heaven."
Following in the footprints of Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo goes back to the Christian martyrs of ancient Rome, and in no fewer than four odes (_Le repas libre, L'homme heureux, Le chant du cirque, Un chant de fête de Néron_) describes the agonising triumph of the martyrs over the brutal and voluptuous cruelty to which they in outward appearance succumb. And the symbolism, too, is the same as in Chateaubriand's poetry; it is the death of the orthodox noble or priest which is represented under the form of the butcheries of the circus.