You never gloat over sin,nor dabble with an ugly curiosity in the corruptions of sense.The passions in your tales are honourable and brave,the motives are clearly human.Honour,Love,Friendship make the threefold cord,the clue your knights and dames follow through how delightful a labyrinth of adventures!Your greatest books,Itake the liberty to maintain,are the Cycle of the Valois ("La Reine Margot,""La Dame de Montsoreau,""Les Quarante-cinq"),and the Cycle of Louis Treize and Louis Quatorze ("Les Trois Mousquetaires,""Vingt Ans Apres,""Le Vicomte de Bragelonne");and,beside these two trilogies--a lonely monument,like the sphinx hard by the three pyramids--"Monte Cristo."In these romances how easy it would have been for you to burn incense to that great goddess,Lubricity,whom our critic says your people worship.You had Brantome,you had Tallemant,you had Retif,and a dozen others,to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present naturalistes.From these alcoves of "Les Dames Galantes,"and from the torture chambers (M.Zola would not have spared us one starting sinew of brave La Mole on the rack)you turned,as Scott would have turned,without a thought of their profitable literary uses.You had other metal to work on:you gave us that superstitious and tragical true love of La Mole's,that devotion--how tender and how pure!--of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau.You gave us the valour of D'Artagnan,the strength of Porthos,the melancholy nobility of Athos:Honour,Chivalry,and Friendship.I declare your characters are real people to me and old friends.I cannot bear to read the end of "Bragelonne,"and to part with them for ever."Suppose Porthos,Athos,and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger,curling their moustaches."How we would welcome them,forgiving D'Artagnan even his hateful fourberie in the case of Milady.The brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached:there is wit everywhere;repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink of small-swords.Then what duels are yours!and what inimitable battle-pieces!I know four good fights of one against a multitude,in literature.These are the Death of Gretir the Strong,the Death of Gunnar of Lithend,the Death of Hereward the Wake,the Death of Bussy d'Amboise.We can compare the strokes of the heroic fighting-times with those described in later days;and,upon my word,I do not know that the short sword of Gretir,or the bill of Skarphedin,or the bow of Gunnar was better wielded than the rapier of your Bussy or the sword and shield of Kingsley's Hereward.
They say your fencing is unhistorical;no doubt it is so,and you knew it.La Mole could not have lunged on Coconnas "after deceiving circle;"for the parry was not invented except by your immortal Chicot,a genius in advance of his time.Even so Hamlet and Laertes would have fought with shields and axes,not with small swords.But what matters this pedantry?In your works we hear the Homeric Muse again,rejoicing in the clash of steel;and even,at times,your very phrases are unconsciously Homeric.
Look at these men of murder,on the Eve of St.Bartholomew,who flee in terror from the Queen's chamber,and "find the door too narrow for their flight:"the very words were anticipated in a line of the "Odyssey"concerning the massacre of the Wooers.And the picture of Catherine de Medicis,prowling "like a wolf among the bodies and the blood,"in a passage of the Louvre--the picture is taken unwittingly from the "Iliad."There was in you that reserve of primitive force,that epic grandeur and simplicity of diction.This is the force that animates "Monte Cristo,"the earlier chapters,the prison,and the escape.In later volumes of that romance,methinks,you stoop your wing.Of your dramas I have little room,and less skill,to speak."Antony,"they tell me,was "the greatest literary event of its time,"was a restoration of the stage."While Victor Hugo needs the cast-off clothes of history,the wardrobe and costume,the sepulchre of Charlemagne,the ghost of Barbarossa,the coffins of Lucretia Borgia,Alexandre Dumas requires no more than a room in an inn,where people meet in riding cloaks,to move the soul with the last degree of terror and of pity."The reproach of being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame--for a moment.The shadow of this tyranny will soon be overpast;and when "La Curee"and "Pot-Bouille"are more forgotten than "Le Grand Cyrus,"men and women--and,above all,boys--will laugh and weep over the page of Alexandre Dumas.Like Scott himself,you take us captive in our childhood.I remember a very idle little boy who was busy with the "Three Musketeers"when he should have been occupied with "Wilkins's Latin Prose.""Twenty years after"(alas!and more)he is still constant to that gallant company;and,at this very moment,is breathlessly wondering whether Grimaud will steal M.de Beaufort out of the Cardinal's prison.
