Vigny was elected to the Academy, but made no compromise in his “discourse of reception,” which was unflinchingly Romantic. Still, he produced nothing save a few scraps; and, beyond the work already enumerated, little has to be added except his Journal d'un poëte and the poems called Les Destinées, edited, with a few fragments, by Louis Ratisbonne after his death. Among his dramatic work, however, should be mentioned Quitte pour la peur and an adaptation of the Merchant of Venice called Shylock. Les Destinées excited no great admiration in France, but they contain some exceedingly beautiful poetry of an austere kind, such as the magnificent speech of Nature in “La Maison du berger” and the remarkable poem entitled “La Colère de Samson.” Vigny died at Paris on the 17th of September 1863.
His later life was almost wholly uneventful, and for the most part, as has been said, spent in retirement. His reputation, however, is perfectly secure. It may, and probably will, rest only on his small volume of poems, though it will not be lessened, as far as qualified literary criticism is concerned, should the reader proceed to the rest of the work. The whole of his non-dramatic verse does not amount to 5000 lines; it may be a good deal less. But the range of subject is comparatively wide, and extraordinary felicity of execution, not merely in language, but in thought, is evident throughout. Vigny, as may be seen in the speech of Nature referred to above, had the secret—very uncommon with French poets—of attaining solemnity without grandiosity, by means of an almost classical precision and gravity of form. The defect of volubility, of never leaving off, which mars to some extent his great contemporary Hugo, is never present in him, and he is equally free from the looseness and disorders of form which are sometimes blemishes in Musset, and from the effeminacy of Lamartine, while once more his nobility of thought and plentifulness of matter save him from the reproach which has been thought to rest on the technically perfect work of Théophile Gautier. The dramatic work is, perhaps, less likely to interest English than French readers, the local colour of Chatterton being entirely false, the sentiment conventional in the extreme, and the real pathos of the story exchanged for a commonplace devotion on the poet's part to his host's wife. In the same way, the finest passages of Othello simply disappear in Vigny 's version. In his remaining works the defect of skill in managing the plot and characters of prose fiction, which has been noticed in Cinq-Mars, reappears, together (in the case of the Journal d'un poëte and elsewhere) with signs of the fastidious and slightly affected temper which was Vigny's chief fault as a man. In his poems proper none of these faults appears, and he is seen wholly at his best. It should be said that of his posthumous work not a little had previously appeared piecemeal in the Revue des deux mondes, to which he was an occasional contributor. The prettiest of the complete editions of his works (of which there are several) is to be found in what is called the Petite bibliothèque Charpentier. For many years the critical attention paid to him was not great. Recently there has been a revival of interest as shown by monographs: M. Paléologue's “Alfred de Vigny” in the Grands écrivains français (1891); L. Dorison's Alfred de Vigny, poète-philosophe (1892) and Un symbole social (1894); G. Asse's Alfred de Vigny et les éditions originales de sa poésie (1895); E. Dupuy's La Jeunesse des Romantiques (1905); and E. Lauvrière's Alfred de Vigny(Paris, 1910). But in most of these rather excessive attention has been paid to the “philosophy” of a pessimistic kind which succeeded Vigny's early Christian Romanticism. This, though not unnoteworthy, is separable from his real poetical quality, and concentration on it rather obscures the latter, which is of the rarest kind. It should be added that an interesting sidelight has been thrown on Vigny by the publication (1905) of his Fragments inédits sur P. et T. Corneille. (G. Sa.)
VIGO, a seaport and naval station of north-western Spain, in the province of Pontevedra; on Vigo Bay (Ria de Vigo) and on a branch of the railway from Tuy to Corunna. Pop. (1900) 23,259. Vigo Bay, one of the finest of the Galician fjords, extends inland for 19 m., and is sheltered by low mountains and by the islands (Islas de Cies, ancient Insulae Siccae) at its mouth. The town is built on the south-eastern shore, and occupies a hilly site dominated by two obsolete forts. The older streets are steep, narrow and tortuous, but there is also a large modern quarter. Vigo owes its importance to its deep and spacious harbour, and to its fisheries. It is a port of call for many lines trading between Western Europe and South America. Shipbuilding is carried on, and large quantities of sardines are canned for export. In 1909, 2041 ships of 2,710,691 tons (1,153,564 being British) entered at Vigo; the imports in that year, including tin and tinplate, coal, machinery, cement, sulphate of copper and foodstuffs, were valued at £481,752; the exports, including sardines, mineral waters and eggs, were valued at £554,824. The town contains flour, paper and sawmills, sugar and petroleum refineries, tanneries, distilleries and soap works; it has also a large agricultural trade and is visited in summer for sea-bathing.
Vigo was attacked by Sir Francis Drake in 1585 and 1589. In 1702 a combined British and Dutch fleet under Sir George Rooke and the duke of Ormonde destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet in the bay, and captured treasure to the value of about £1,000,000; numerous attempts have been made to recover the larger quantity of treasure which was supposed, on doubtful evidence, to have been sunk during the battle. In 1719 Vigo was captured by the British under Viscount Cobham.
VIJAYANAGAR, or Bijanagar (“the city of victory”), an ancient Hindu kingdom and ruined city of southern India. The kingdom lasted from about 1336 to 1565, forming during all that period a bulwark against Mahommedan invasion from the north. Its foundation, and even great part of its history, is obscure; but its power and wealth are attested by more than one European traveller, and also by the character of the existing ruins. At the beginning of the 14th century Mahommedan raiders had effectually destroyed every Hindu principality throughout southern India, but did not attempt to occupy the country permanently. In this state of desolation Hindu nationality rose again under two brothers, named Harihara and Bukka, of whom little more can be said than that they were Kanarese by race. Hence their kingdom was afterwards known as the Carnatic. At its widest extent, it stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea, from Masulipatam to Goa; and every Hindu prince in the south acknowledged its supremacy. The site of the capital was chosen, with strategic skill, on the right bank of the river Tungabhadra, which here runs through a rocky gorge. Within thirty years the Hindu Rayas of Vijayanagar were able to hold their own against the Bahmani sultans, who had now established their independence of Delhi in the Deccan proper. Warfare with the Mahommedans across the border in the Raichur doab was carried on almost unceasingly, and with varying result. Two, or possibly three, different dynasties are believed to have occupied the throne of Vijayanagar as time went on; and its final downfall may be ascribed to the domestic dissensions thus produced. This occurred in 1565, when the confederate sultans of Bijapur, Ahmednagar and Golconda, who had divided amongst themselves the Bahmani dominions, overwhelmed the Vijayanagar army in the plain of Talikota, and sacked the defenceless city. The Raya fled south to Penukonda, and later to Chandragiri, where one of his descendants granted to the English the site of Fort St George or Madras. The city has ever since remained a wilderness of immense ruins, which are now conserved by the British government.
See R. Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (1900); and B. S. Row, History of Vijayanagar (Madras, 1906).
VIKING. The word “Viking,” in the sense in which it is used to-day, is derived from the Icelandic (Old Norse) Víkingr (m.), signifying simply a sea-rover or pirate. There is also in Icelandic the allied word víking (f.), a predatory voyage. As a loan-word víking occurs in A.S. poetry (vícing or wícing), e.g. in Widsith, Byrnoth, Exodus. During the Saga Age (900-1050), in the beginning of Norse literature, víkingr is not as a rule used to designate any class of men. Almost every young Icelander of sufficient means and position, and a very large number of young Norsemen, made one or more viking expeditions. We read of such a one that he went “a-viking” (fara i viking, vera i viking, or very often fara, &c., vestan i viking). The procedure was almost a recognized part of education, and was analogous to the grand tour made by our great-grandfathers in the 18th century. But the use of víkingr in a more generic sense is still to be found in the Saga Age. If the designation of this or that personage as mikill víkingr or rauða víkingr (red viking) be not reckoned an instance of such use, we have it at all events in the name of a small quasi-nationality, the Jómsvíkingr, settled at Jómsborg on the Baltic (in modern Pomerania),
