'Go and see it! There is great art, great nature, great improbability, all massed and mingled all together in the rapid rush of terrible things, which pour upon you, press upon you, keep you fixed to your seat, breathless, motionless. And then a pause comes-the piece is over-you shake your head, you stretch your limbs, you still feel shocked, bewildered, and walk home as if awakened from a terrible nightmare. Such is the effect of the "Tour de Nesle."' Such was the effect when Mademoiselle Georges played Marguerite, and Frederic Le Maître, Buridan; and (independently of the acting) the rapid succession of surprises make it a masterpiece in its way. No one can doubt that these are the creation of Dumas, along with everything else that constitutes the distinctive merits or demerits of the piece. We should also say, Go and see Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle; you will follow the action with wrapt and constantly growing interest; and you will listen to sparkling dialogue, exquisitely adapted to the characters. · It was as a dramatist that Dumas became famous, although his world-wide renown is owing to his romances, which he composed at headlong speed, contemporaneously with his dramas, without much adding to his reputation until 1844-45, when he published Les Trois Mousquetaires,' 'Vingt ans Après,' and 'Monte Christo,' the most popular of his works. There is hardly an inhabited district, in either hemisphere, in which Dumas, pointing to a volume of one of them, might not exclaim like Johnson pointing to a copy of the duodecimo edition of his Dictionary in a country-house : 'Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?' They have remained the most popular, and remained moreover exclusively associated with his name, although the authorship has been confidently assigned by critics of repute to others, and the most persistent ridicule has been levelled at their conception, their composition, their materials, and their plan. Amongst the most mischievous assailants was Thackeray, in a letter addressed to M. le Marquis Davy de la Pailleterie, printed in the 'Revue Britannique' for January, 1847. We give a specimen:— 'As for me, I am a decided partisan of the new system of which you are the inventor in France. I like your romances in one-andtwenty volumes, whilst regretting all the time that there are so many blank pages between your chapters, and so small an amount of printed matter in your pages. I, moreover, like your continuations. I have not skipped a word of "Monte Christo," and it made me quite happy when, after having read eight volumes of the "Trois Mousquetaires," I saw M. Rolandi, the excellent circulating-library man, who supplies me with books, bring me ten more under the title of "Vingt Ans Ans Après." May you make Athos, Porthos, and Aramis live a hundred years, to treat us to twelve volumes more of their adventures! May the physician (Médecin) whose "Mémoires" you have taken in hand, beginning them at the commencement of the reign of Louis XV., make the fortunes of the apothecaries of the Revolution of July by his prescriptions!' Innumerable readers would reciprocate in earnest the wishes thus ironically expressed, and Thackeray might have remembered that length is more a merit than an objection so long as interest is kept up. It is strange, too, that he should have hailed Dumas as the inventor of the voluminous novel, particularly after calling attention to the blank pages between his chapters and the small amount of printed matter in his pages. There is an English translation of Les Trois Mousquetaires,' in one royal octavo volume, and of Monte Christo' in three volumes octavo. The seven volumes of Clarissa Harlow' contain more printed matter than the longest of Dumas' romances. Mademoiselle Scudery beats him hollow in length, and might be apostrophised like her brother 'Bienheureux Scudery, dont la fertile plume, Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume.' 6 So does Restif de la Bretonne, one of the most popular novelists of the eighteenth century, whose Les Contemporaines' is in fortytwo volumes. 6 So much for length. In point of plot, they are on a par with Don Quixote' and 'Gil Blas: in point of incident, situation, character, animated narrative, and dialogue, they will rarely lose by comparison with the author of Waverley.' Compare, for example, the scene in Les Trois Mousquetaires between Buckingham and Anne of Austria, with the strikingly analogous scene between Leicester and Elizabeth in Kenilworth.' If Dumas occasionally spun out his romances till they grew wearisome, it was not because he was incapable of compressing them. His Chevalier d'Harmenthal,' which we ourselves are inclined to consider one of his best novels, is contained in three volumes. His Impressions de Voyage' abound in short novels and stories, which are quite incomparable in their way, like pictures by Meissonnier and Gerome. Take for dramatic effect the story told by the monk of La Chartreuse; or, for genuine humour, that of Pierrot, the donkey, who had such a terror of both fire and water that they were obliged to blind him before passing a forge or a bridge. The explanation is, that two young Parisians had hired him for a journey; and having recently suffered from cold, they hit upon an expedient which they carried into execution without delay. They began by putting a layer of wet turf upon Vol. 131.-No. 261. his his back, then a layer of snow, then another layer of turf, and lastly a bundle of firewood, which they lighted, and thus improvised a moveable fire to warm them on their walk. All went well till the turf was dried and the fire reached poor Pierrot's back, when he set off braying, kicking, and rolling, till he rolled into an icy stream, where he lay for some hours; so as to be half frozen after being half roasted. Hence the combination of hydrophobia and pyrophobia which afflicted him. Where Dumas erred and fell behind was in pushing to excess the failing with which Byron reproached Scott 'Let others spin their meagre brains for hire, He could not resist the temptation of making hay whilst the sun shone-of using his popularity as if, like the purse of Fortunatus, it had been inexhaustible-of overtasking his powers till, like the overtasked elephant, they proved unequal to the call. There was a period, near the end of his life, when Theodore Hook, besides editing a newspaper and a magazine, was (to use his own expression) driving three novels or stories abreast-in other words, contemporaneously composing them. Dumas boasts of having engaged for five at once; and the tradesmanlike manner in which he made his bargains was remarkable. M. Véron (the proprietor of the Constitutionel') came to me and said: "We are ruined if we do not publish, within eight days, an amusing, sparkling, interesting romance.' "You require a volume: that is 6000 lines, that is 135 pages of my writing. Here is paper; number and mark (paraphez) 135 pages. Sued for non-performance of contract, and pleading his own cause, he magniloquently apostrophised the Court. 'The Academicians are Forty. Let them contract to supply you with eighty volumes in a year: they will make you bankrupt! Alone I have done what never man did before, nor ever will do again.' We need hardly add that the stipulated work was imperfectly and unequally done 'Sunt bona, sunt mediocria, sunt mala plura.' Du Halde is said to have composed his 'Description Géographique et Historique' of China without quitting Paris, and Dumas certainly wrote 'Quinze Jours au Sinai' and 'De Paris à Astracan,' without once setting foot in Asia. But most of his 'Impressions de Voyage,' in France, Italy, Spain, &c., were the results of actual travel; and his expedition to Algeria in a Government steamer, with a literary mission from the Government, gave rise to an animated debate in the Chamber of Deputies (February 10, 1847), in which he was rudely handled till M. de Salvandy Salvandy (Minister of Public Instruction) came to the rescue, and, after justifying the mission, added— The same writer had received similar missions under administrations anterior to mine.' Dumas (we are assured) meditated a challenge to M. Leon de Malleville for injurious words spoken in this debate, and requested M. Viennet, as President of the Society of Men of Letters, to act as his friend. M. Viennet, after desiring the request to be reduced to writing, wrote a formal refusal, alleging that M. Dumas, having in some sort, before the civil tribunal of the Seine, abdicated the title of man of letters to assume that of marquis, had no longer a claim on the official head of the literary republic. Hereupon the meditated challenge was given up. The representation of 'Les Mohicans de Paris,' a popular drama brought out by Dumas in 1864, having been prohibited by the Censorship, he addressed and printed a spirited remonstrance to the Emperor: 'Sire,-There were in 1830, and there are still, three men at the head of French literature. These three men are Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and myself. Victor Hugo is proscribed; Lamartine is ruined. People cannot proscribe me like Hugo; there is nothing in my life, in my writings, or in my words, for proscription to fasten on. But they can ruin me like Lamartine; and in effect they are ruining me. 'I know not what ill-will animates the censorship against me. I have written and published twelve hundred volumes. It is not for me to appreciate them in a literary point of view. Translated into all languages, they have been as far as steam could carry them. Although I am the least worthy of the three, these volumes have made me, in the five parts of the world, the most popular of the three; perhaps because one is a thinker, the other a dreamer, and I am but a vulgariser (vulgarisateur). Of these twelve hundred volumes, there is not one which may not be given to read to a workman of the Faubourg St. Antoine, the most republican, or to a young girl of the Faubourg St. Germain, the most modest, of all our faubourgs.' His politics were never incendiary or dangerous in any way. They were always those of a moderate Republican, and he consistently adhered to them. His best romances rarely transgress against propriety, and are entirely free from that hard, cold, sceptical, materialist, illusion-destroying tone, which is so repelling in Balzac and many others of the most popular French novelists. But Dumas must have formed a strange notion of the young ladies of the noble Faubourg to suppose that they could sit out a representation of 'Antony' or 'Angèle' without a blush. After recapitulating the misdeeds of the imperial censorship and the enormous losses he had sustained, he concludes: I appeal, then, for the first time, and probably for the last, to the prince whose hand I had the honour to clasp at Arenenberg, at Ham, and at the Elysée, and who, having found me in the character of proselyte on the road of exile and on that of the prison, has never found me in the character of petitioner on the road of the Empire.' The Emperor, who never turned a deaf ear on a proselyte or companion on either road, immediately caused the prohibition. to be withdrawn. Amongst the many strange episodes of Dumas' adventurous and erratic career was his connection with Garibaldi, who made him Director of the Museum at Naples during the interregnum. The illness which ended with his death, brought on a complete paralysis of all his faculties, and he died towards the close of 1870, happily insensible to the hourly increasing disasters and humiliations of his country. Occurring at a less anxious and occupied period, his death would have been commemorated as one of the leading events of the year, and it would hardly have been left to a foreign journal to pay the first earnest tribute to his memory. Take him for all in all, he richly merits a niche in the Temple of Fame; and what writer does not who has been unceasingly before the public for nearly half a century without once forfeiting his popularity? whose multifarious productions have been equally and constantly in request in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Calcutta, Sydney, and New York. Think of the amount of amusement and information he has diffused, the weary hours he has helped to while away, the despondency he has lightened, the sick-beds he has relieved, the gay fancies, the humourous associations, the inspiriting thoughts, we owe to him. To lie on a sofa and read eternal new novels of Marivaux and Crebillon, was the beau idéal, the day dream, of Gray, one of the finest and most fastidious minds of the eighteenth century; and what is there of Marivaux or Crebillon to compete in attractiveness with the wondrous fortunes of a Monte Christo or the chivalrous adventures of a D'Artagnan? A title to fame, like a chain of proofs, may be cumulative. It may rest on the multiplicity and universality of production and capacity. Voltaire, for example, who symbolizes an age, produced no one work in poetry or prose that approximates to first rate in its kind, if we except Candide' and Zadig;' and their kind is not the first. Dumas must be judged by the same standard; as one who was at everything in the ring, whose foot was ever in the stirrup, whose lance was ever in the rest, who infused new life into the acting drama, indefinitely extended the domain of fiction, and (in his Impressions de Voyage') invented a new literature of the road. So judged-as he will be, when |