Chapter M: VIEUXBOIS almost inaudibly (9)

Born to the spacious empire of the Nine,
One would have thought she should have been content
To manage well that mighty government;
But what can young ambitious souls confine?
To the next realm she stretched her sway,
For Painture near adjoining lay,
A plenteous province and alluring prey.
A Chamber of Dependences was framed,
As conquerors will never want pretense,
(When armed to justify the offense,)
And the whole fief in right of Poetry she claimed.
The country open lay without defense;
For poets frequent inroads there had made,
And perfectly could represent
The shape, the face, with every lineament,
And all the large demains which the dumb Sister swayed;
All bowed beneath her government.
Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went.
Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,
And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind;
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks
And fruitful plains and barren rocks;
Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear,
The bottom did the top appear;
Of deeper too and ampler floods
Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods;
Of lofty trees, with sacred shades
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
And shaggy satyrs standing near,
Which them at once admire and fear.
The ruins too of some majestic piece,
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece,
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;
What nature, art, bold fiction, e'er durst frame,
Her forming hand gave feature to the name.
So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before,
But when the peopled Ark the whole creation bore.

The scene then changed; with bold erected look
Our martial King the sight with reverence strook:
For, not content to express his outward part,
Her hand called out the image of his heart:
His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear,
His high-designing thoughts were figured there,
As when by magic ghosts are made appear.
Our phoenix Queen was portrayed too so bright
Beauty alone could beauty take so right:
Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace,
Were all observed, as well as heavenly face.
With such a peerless majesty she stands,
As in that day she took the crown from sacred hands;
Before a train of heroines was seen,
In beauty foremost, as in rank the Queen.
Thus nothing to her genius was denied,
But like a ball of fire, the farther thrown,
Still with a greater blaze she shone,
And her bright soul broke out on every side.
What next she had designed, Heaven only knows:
To such immoderate growth her conquest rose
That Fate alone its progress could oppose.

Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
The well-proportioned shape and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
In earth the much-lamented virgin lies.
Not wit nor piety could Fate prevent;
Nor was the cruel Destiny content
To finish all the murder at a blow,
To sweep at once her life and beauty too;
But, like a hardened felon, took a pride
To work more mischievously slow,
And plundered first, and then destroyed.
O double sacrilege on things divine,
To rob the relic, and deface the shrine!
But thus Orinda died:
Heaven by the same disease did both translate;
As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.

Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas
His waving streamers to the winds displays,
And vows for his return with vain devotion pays.
Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear,
The winds too soon will waft thee here!
Slack all thy sails, and fear to come;
Alas! thou knowest not, thou art wrecked at home,
No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face;
Thou hast already had her last embrace.
But look aloft, and if thou ken'st from far,
Among the Pleiads, a new-kindled star,
If any sparkles than the rest more bright,
'Tis she that shines in that propitious light.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the Valley of Jehoshaphat
The judging God shall close the book of Fate,
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shalt go,
As harbinger of Heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learned below.

A SONG

Fair, sweet, and young, receive a prize
Reserved for your victorious eyes:
From crowds whom at your feet you see,
Oh pity and distinguish me!
As I from thousand beauties more
Distinguish you, and only you adore.

Your face for conquest was designed,
Your every motion charms my mind;
Angels, when you your silence break,
Forget their hymns to hear you speak;
But when at once they hear and view,
Are loth to mount, and long to stay with you.

No graces can your form improve,
But all are lost, unless you love;
While that sweet passion you disdain,
Your veil and beauty are in vain:
In pity then prevent my fate,
For after dying all reprieve's too late.

LINES PRINTED UNDER MILTON'S PORTRAIT

IN TONSON'S FOLIO EDITION OF THE 'PARADISE LOST,' 1688

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last:
The force of Nature could no farther go;
To make a third she joined the former two.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST; OR, THE POWER OF MUSIC

A SONG IN HONOR OF ST. CECILIA'S DAY: 1697

I

'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;
His valiant peers were placed around;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound:
(So should desert in arms be crowned.)
The lovely Thais, by his side,
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride,
In flower of youth and beauty's pride,
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

CHORUS

Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

II

Timotheus, placed on high
Amid the tuneful quire,
With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above,
(Such is the power of mighty love.)
A dragon's fiery form belied the god:
Sublime on radiant spires he rode,
When he to fair Olympia pressed:
And while he sought her snowy breast,
Then round her slender waist he curled,
And stamped an image of himself, a sovereign of the world.
The listening crowd admire the lofty sound
A present deity, they shout around;
A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound:
With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.

CHORUS

With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.

III

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young.
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums;
Flushed with a purple grace
He shows his honest face:
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes.
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus's blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

CHORUS

Bacchus's blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

IV

Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.
The master saw the madness rise,
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And while he heaven and earth defied,
Changed his hand, and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse,
Soft pity to infuse;
He sung Darius great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
And now and then a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

CHORUS

Revolving in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
And now and then a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

V

The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree;
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honor but an empty bubble,
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying:
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, oh think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thais sits beside thee;
Take the good the gods provide thee;
The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So Love was crowned, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

CHORUS

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

VI

Now strike the golden lyre again;
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid sound
Has raised up his head;
As awaked from the dead,
And amazed, he stares around.
Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries,
See the Furies arise;
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.
Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods!
The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

CHORUS

And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

VII

Thus long ago,
Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute,
Timotheus, to his breathing flute
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.

GRAND CHORUS

At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.

ACHITOPHEL[A]

From 'Absalom and Achitophel'

This plot, which failed for want of common-sense,
Had yet a deep and dangerous consequence:
For as when raging fevers boil the blood,
The standing lake soon floats into a flood,
And every hostile humor, which before
Slept quiet in its channels, bubbles o'er;
So several factions from this first ferment
Work up to foam, and threat the government.
Some by their friends, more by themselves thought wise,
Opposed the power to which they could not rise.
Some had in courts been great, and thrown from thence,
Like fiends were hardened in impenitence.
Some, by their monarch's fatal mercy, grown
From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne,
Were raised in power and public office high;
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.

Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked councils fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son;
Got while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin or to rule the State.
To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke:
Then, seized with fear yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's will!
Where crowds can wink, and no offense be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;
Swift of dispatch, and easy of access.
Oh! had he been content to serve the Crown,
With virtues only proper to the gown;
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed;
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.
Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,
He stood at bold defiance with his prince;
Held up the buckler of the people's cause
Against the Crown, and skulked behind the laws.
The wished occasion of the plot he takes;
Some circumstances finds, but more he makes.
By buzzing emissaries fills the ears
Of listening crowds with jealousies and fears
Of arbitrary counsels brought to light,
And proves the king himself a Jebusite.

[A] Lord Shaftesbury.

MAXIME DU CAMP

(1822-1894)

"Why have I always felt happy, filled with the spirit of content and of infinite independence, whenever I have slept in the tent or in the ruins of foreign lands?" The love of change and adventure has been the spring of Du Camp's life, a life whose events are blended so intimately with his literary achievement, that to know the one is to know the other. This practical man of the world has an imaginative, beauty-loving side to his nature, which craves stimulus from tropical unfamiliar nature and exotic ways.

So, after the usual training of French boys in lycee and college,--"in those hideous houses where they wearied our childhood," as he says,--the just-emancipated youth of twenty-two left his home in Paris for an eighteen-months' trip in the far East. The color and variety of the experience whetted his love of travel, and very soon after his return he began a serious study of photography in view of future plans.

Then came the revolution of 1848, the overthrow of Louis Philippe; and Du Camp had an opportunity to prove his courage and patriotism in the ranks of the National Guard. In his 'Souvenirs de l'Annee 1848,' he tells the story with color and interest, and with the forceful logic of an eye-witness.

His bravery and a serious wound won him the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, bestowed by General Cavaignac. This drew attention to him, and led the minister of public instruction to intrust him a few months later with a mission of exploration to Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Asia Minor; a result of which trip was his first literary success. Utilizing his photographic knowledge, he collected a great many negatives for future development. Upon his return he published a volume of descriptive sketches, 'Le Nil, Egypte, et Nubie,' generously illustrated with printed reproductions of these pictures. This first combination of photography and typography was popular, and was speedily imitated, initiative of many illustrated books.

Later, Du Camp's warlike and exploring instincts led him at his own expense into Sicily with Garibaldi, where he collected matter and photographs for 'Les Deux Siciles', another successful volume. In 1851 he associated with others to found the Revue de Paris, for which he wrote regularly until its suspension in 1858. He has also written a great deal for the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which for several years he continued a series of historical studies upon the government of Paris. The six volumes upon 'Paris: its Organs, its Functions, its Life, during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,' form one of his chief achievements. His personal knowledge on the subject, and his access to valuable unpublished documents, give it authoritative value.

In 'Les Ancetres de la Commune,' and 'Les Convulsions de Paris,' he has accomplished much more in the same line. The latter, a brilliant circumstantial exposition of the Commune, a logical condemnation of its folly and ignorance, brought him gratitude from the French Academy, and aided his election to that body in 1880. For this extensive work on contemporary politics, for his illustrated travels, and his artistic and literary criticism, he is better known than for his two or three novels and volumes of poetry.

Du Camp's may be characterized as a soldierly style, strong, direct, and personal. He loves to retrace old scenes with the later visible sequence of cause and effect. Always straightforward, sometimes bluntly self-assertive, he is sometimes eloquent. Perhaps his great charm is spontaneity.

A STREET SCENE DURING THE COMMUNE

From 'The Convulsions of Paris'

There were strange episodes during this terrible evening. At half-past eight, M. Rouville, a Protestant minister, was at home in a house he owns on the Rue de Lille. He heard an alarm, the cry, "Everything is burning! Escape!" Then he went down, saw the street in flames, and the poor people weeping as they escaped. Just as he was returning to rescue a few valuables, some federates rushed into the court, crying, "Hurry! They are setting the place on fire!" He took some money and the manuscript of the sermons he had preached. Mechanically he seized his hat and cane. Then, throwing a last look around the apartment where he had long lived, invoking the memory of the great Biblical destructions familiar to him in Holy Writ, weak and trembling with emotion, he descended the staircase from his home.

There was indescribable tumult in the street, dominated by the cry of women; a shrill wordless involuntary cry of terror, vibrating above the uproar like a desperate appeal to which no supernatural power replied. Pastor Rouville stopped. The house next his own was in flames. They were setting fire to the one opposite. The houses between the Rue de Beaune and the Rue du Bac, red from cellar to garret, were vomiting flame from all the broken windows.

The pastor's family were not at Paris. He was alone with a faithful maid, who did not leave him for a moment. This doubtless determined his resolution, and gave him courage to brave all to save his house. If he had felt his wife and daughter near, he would have thought only of their safety, and would have hastened to get them away from the place, where, he said, "One could die of horror."

Pastor Rouville is a small man, whose great activity keeps him young and remarkably energetic. He belongs to the strong race of Southern Protestants, which has resisted everything to guard its faith. I should not be surprised if he has had some nimble Cevennole, companion of Jean Cavalier, among his ancestors. Chaplain in the prisons of the Seine, accustomed to sound doubtful spirits, to seek in vicious hearts some intact fibres which could re-attach them to virtue; fervent in faith, eloquent, with a high voice which could rise above the tumult, knowing by experience that there is no obscurity so profound that light cannot be made to penetrate it,--he had remained on duty at his post during the Commune; for the prisoners had more need of spiritual aid, now that the regular administration no longer watched over them. He had been indignant at the incarceration of Catholic priests, and had signed the fine protest demanding the liberty of the archbishop, which the ministers had carried to the Hotel de Ville.

Alone in the presence of the great disaster which threatened him, he commended his spirit to God, remembering that the little stone of David had killed the giant Philistine, and he decided to fight for his home. He encamped energetically before the door, to forbid access; and using the weapons bestowed upon him by Providence and study, he spoke. The federates stopped before this man, whose simplicity rendered him heroic. One may guess what he said to them:--

"Why strike the innocent and tender, as if they were execrable? Why be enraged with a Protestant, a minister, whose religion, founded on the dogma of free examination, is naturally allied to republican ideas? The faith he teaches is that promulgated by Christ: Christ said to Peter, 'Sheathe thy sword;' he said to men,'Love one another!' No, the people of Paris, this people whose sufferings have been shared, whose unfortunates have been succored during the siege; this people, so good when not led astray by the wicked; this people will not burn the house of a poor minister, whose whole life has been passed in the exercise of charity."

The pastor must have been eloquent and have spoken with profound conviction, for the federates who were listening to him began to weep, then seized and embraced him. Meantime the tenants of the shops in his house had lowered the iron curtains, which at least was an obstacle against the first throwing of petroleum. This lasted an hour. The federates, evidently softened and touched by the pastor's despair, remained near him and had pity upon him. An old sergeant of the National Guard stayed beside him, as if to bring him help in case of need, and to maintain a little order among his subordinates. Some hope revived in M. Rouville's heart, and he was saying to himself that perhaps his house would be spared, when some young men, wearing the braided caps of officers, arrived as if to inspect the fires. Seeing one house intact, emerging like a little island from an ocean of flames, they exclaimed. The pastor sprang forward and wanted to argue with them. It was trouble wasted. One of these young scamps said to him, "You are an old reactionist: you bore us with your talking. If you don't like it, we will pin you to the wall." Then, turning toward the federates and pointing to the houses on the Rue de Lille, he cried, "All that belongs to the people. The people have the right to burn every thing."

This had perhaps decided the fate of the pastor's house, when the sergeant of federates interfered, and addressing the officer said to him, "I have received orders to stop the fire just here." "Show me your order," answered the officer. The sergeant replied, "It is a verbal order." Then there was a lively quarrel between the two men. The sergeant was firm. The officer insisted, and according to the custom of the moment, threatened to have the rebel shot.

The situation was becoming grave, when an incident resolved it. A mounted officer galloped up and ordered all the federates to retreat, because they were about to be surrounded by the troops from Versailles.

Nearly all the National Guards hurried away. The sergeant who had remained near the pastor said, "Get away, scurry, father! You will get yourself killed, and that will not save your camp."

The other officers passed, commanded everything to be burned, and when the sergeant resisted, compelled him to leave. For half an hour the unhappy pastor remained alone, holding back the incendiaries, passing from supplications to threats, and gaining time by every possible artifice. The sergeant returned with tearful eyes, and showed the dismayed pastor a written order to burn the house, sent by his chiefs. Not yet discouraged, the pastor roused the compassion of the old sergeant, and so moved him that the rebel cried, "Ah, well! so much the worse! I'll disobey. No, I won't let your house be burned. They'll shoot me. It's all the same. I deserve to be." Then raising his hand toward the sky, where the stars shone like sparks through the veil of wind-driven smoke, he cried "O my father, I believe in God! Fear nothing; I will stay here. They shan't touch your house. I shall know how to keep off plunderers!"

O strange deceiving people; ready for all crimes, ready for all good actions, according to the voice which speaks to thee and the emotion which carries thee away! This sergeant was indeed thy likeness, and one need not despair of thee, although thou dishearten those who love thee best!

The brandy at the wine merchants'; the ether at the druggists'; the powder and shot forgotten in stations, or secreted in cellars, burst with terrible explosions and scattered flaming coals. The pastor looked at his house, still miraculously intact. He gave it a last look, and departed sobbing. It was eleven o'clock. For three hours in the midst of this furnace he had resisted the incendiaries. His strength was exhausted. The faithful servant, who went back again and again to rescue one thing more from the burning, dragged him away. In the Rue des Saints-Peres they plunged into darkness, all the deeper for the brazier of sparkling lights behind them. They groped their way over the barricades through a shower of bullets. More than once they fell down. Finally, safe and sound despite the dangers braved, they reached the Rue de Seine, near the Rue de Bucy, where they found refuge in a lodging-house.

Next day Pastor Rouville ran towards the Rue de Lille. His house was standing intact. The old sergeant had kept his word. What became of this brave man, who at the risk of his life saved the property of a man whose speech had touched him? Perhaps he perished. Perhaps he received his due reward. Perhaps he drags out a wretched life in some workshop of a penitentiary. I know not his fate, nor even his name.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR

(1803?-1870)

BY ANDREW LANG

No author is less capable of being illustrated by extracts than Alexandre Dumas. Writers like Prosper Merimee or Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson can be not inadequately represented by a short story or a brief scene. Even from Scott's work we can detach 'Wandering Willie's Tale,' or 'The Tapestried Chamber,' or the study of Effie Deans in prison, or of Jeanie Deans before the Queen. But Dumas is invariably diffuse; though, unlike other diffuse talkers and writers, he is seldom tedious. He is long without _longueurs_. A single example will explain this better than a page of disquisition. The present selector had meant to extract Dumas's first meeting with Charles Nodier at the theatre. In memory, that amusing scene appeared to occupy some six pages. In fact, it covers nearly a hundred and thirty pages of the Brussels edition of the 'Memoirs' of Dumas. One reads it with such pleasure that looked back upon, it seems short, while it is infinitely too long to be extracted. In dialogue Dumas is both excellent and copious, so that he cannot well be abbreviated. He is the Porthos of novelists, gigantic, yet (at his best) muscular and not overgrown. For these reasons, extracts out of his romances do no justice to Dumas. To read one of his novels, say 'The Three Musketeers,' even in a slovenly translation, is to know more of him than a world of critics and essayists can teach. It is also to forget the world, and to dwell in a careless Paradise. Our object therefore is not to give an "essence of Dumas," but to make readers peruse him in his own books, and to save them trouble by indicating, among these books, the best.

It is notorious that Dumas was at the head of a "Company" like that which Scott laughingly proposed to form "for writing and publishing the class of books called Waverley Novels." In legal phrase, Dumas "deviled" his work; he had assistants, "researchers," collaborators. He would briefly sketch a plot, indicate the authorities to be consulted, hand his notes to Maquet or Fiorentino, receive their draught, and expand that into a romance. Work thus executed cannot be equal to itself. Many books signed by Dumas may be neglected without loss. Even to his best works, one or other of his assistants was apt to assert a claim. The answer is convincing. Not one of these ingenious men ever produced, by himself, anything that could be mistaken for the work of the master. All his good things have the same stamp and the same spirit, which we find nowhere else. Again, nobody contests his authorship of his own 'Memoirs,' or of his book about his dogs, birds, and other beasts--'The Story of My Pets.' Now, the merit of these productions is, in kind, identical with many of the merits of his best novels. There is the same good-humor, gayety, and fullness of life. We may therefore read Dumas's central romances without much fear of being grateful to the wrong person. Against the modern theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are the work of many hands in many ages, we can urge that these supposed "hands" never did anything nearly so good for themselves; and the same argument applies in the case of Alexandre Dumas.

A brief sketch of his life must now be given. "No man has had so many of his possessions disputed as myself," says Dumas. Not only his right to his novels, but his right to his name and to legitimate birth, was contested. Here we shall follow his own account of himself in his 'Memoirs,' which do not cover nearly the whole of his life. Alexandre Dumas was born at Villers-Cotterets-sur-Aisne, on July 24th, 1803(?). He lived to almost exactly the threescore and ten years of the Psalmist. He saw the fall of Napoleon, the restoration of the rightful king, the expulsion of the Legitimate monarch in 1830, the Orleans rule, its overthrow in 1848, the Republic, the Empire, and the Terrible Year, 1870-1871. Then he died, in the hour of the sorrow of his

"Immortal and indomitable France."

Dumas's full name was noble: he was Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie. His family estate, La Pailleterie, was made a marquisate by Louis XIV. in 1707. About 1760 the grandfather of Dumas sold his lands in France, and went to Hayti. There in 1762 was born his father, son of Louise Cossette Dumas and of the Marquis de la Pailleterie. The mother must have been a woman of color; Dumas talks of his father's "mulatto hue," and he himself had undoubted traces of African blood. Yet it appears that the grandparents were duly married. In 1772, his wife having died, the old marquis returned to France. The Revolution broke out, and the father of Alexandre Dumas fought in the armies of the Republic. The cruel mob called him by way of mockery, "Monsieur Humanity," because he endeavored to rescue the victims of their ferocity. He was a man of great courage and enormous physical strength. Napoleon, in honor of one of his feats of arms, called him in a dispatch "The Horatius Cocles of the Republic." He was with Napoleon in Egypt, where a quarrel arose, as he suspected and opposed the ambition of the future emperor. Though Dumas found a treasure in a bey's house, he honorably presented it to his government. He died in France, a poor man, in 1806.

Dumas was not at home when his father died. He was staying, a child of four, with his cousin Marianne.

"At midnight I was awakened, or rather my cousin and I were
awakened, by a great blow struck on the door of our room. By
the light of a night lamp I saw my cousin start up, much
alarmed. No mortal could have knocked at our chamber door,
for the outer doors were locked. [He gives a plan of the
house.] I got out of bed to open the door. 'Where are you
going, Alexandre?' cried my cousin.

"'To let in papa, who is coming to say adieu.'

"The girl dragged me back to bed; I cried, 'Adieu, papa,
adieu!' Something like a sighing breath passed over my
face.... My father had died at the hour when we heard the
knock!"

This anecdote may remind the reader of what occurred at Abbotsford on the night when Mr. Bullock died in London. Dumas tells another tale of the same kind ('Memoirs,' Vol. xi., page 255: Brussels, 1852). On the night of his mother's death he in vain sought a similar experience. These things "come not by observation"; but Dumas, like Scott, had a mind not untuned to such themes, though not superstitious.

Young Dumas, like most men of literary genius, taught himself to read. A Buffon with plates was the treasure of the child, already a lover of animals. To know more about the beasts he learned to read for his own pleasure. Of mythology he was as fond as Keats. His intellectual life began (like the imaginative life of our race) in legends of beasts and gods. For Dumas was born _un primitif_, as the French say; his taste was the old immortal human taste for romance, for tales of adventure, love, and war. This predilection is now of course often scouted by critics who are over-civilized and under-educated. Superior persons will never share the love of Dumas which was common to Thackeray and Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson. From Buffon he went on to the 'Letters to Emil' (letters on mythology), and to the 'Arabian Nights.' An imaginative child, he knew the "pains of sleep" as Coleridge did, and the terrors of vain imagination. Many children whose manhood is not marked by genius are visionaries. A visionary too was little Dumas, like Scott, Coleridge, and George Sand in childhood. To the material world he ever showed a bold face. "I have never known doubt or despair," he says; his faith in God was always unshaken; the doctrine of immortality he regarded rather with hope than absolute belief. Yet surely it is a corollary to the main article of his creed.

At ten, Dumas went to a private school kept by an Abbe Gregoire. At the Restoration, a boy of twelve, he made and he adhered to an important resolution. He chose to keep his grandmaternal name of Dumas, like his father, and to drop the name and arms of De la Pailleterie, with all the hopes of boons from the restored Royalists. Dumas remained a man of the popular party, though he had certain relations of friendship with the house of Orleans. But he entertained no posthumous hatred of the old monarchy and the old times. His kings are nearly as good, in his romances, as Sir Walter's own, and his Henri III. and Henri IV. may be named with Scott's Gentle King Jamie and Louis XI.

Madame Dumas, marquise as she was by marriage, kept a tobacconist's shop; and in education, Dumas was mainly noted for his calligraphy. Poaching was now the boy's favorite amusement; all through his life he was very fond of sport. Napoleon returned from Elba; Dumas saw him drive through Villers-Cotterets on his way to Waterloo. Soon afterwards came in stragglers; the English, they said, had been defeated at five o'clock on June 18th, but the Prussians arrived at six o'clock and won the battle. What the English were doing between five and six does not appear; it hardly seems that they quitted the field. The theory of that British defeat at Waterloo was never abandoned by Dumas. He saw Napoleon return through Villers-Cotterets. "Wellington, Buelow, Bluecher, were but masks of men; really they were spirits sent by the Most High to defeat Napoleon." It is a pious opinion!

At the age of fifteen Dumas, like Scott, became a notary's clerk. About this time he saw 'Hamlet' played, in the version of Ducis. Corneille and Racine had always been disliked by this born romanticist. 'Hamlet' carried him off his feet. Soon afterwards he read Buerger's 'Lenore,' the ballad which Scott translated at the very beginning of his career as an author.

"Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee."

This German ballad, says Scott, "struck him as the kind of thing he could do himself." And Dumas found that the refrain

"Hurrah, fantome, les morts vont vite,"

was more to his taste than the French poetry of the eighteenth century. He tried to translate 'Lenore.' Scott finished it in a night; Dumas gave up in despair. But this, he says, was the beginning of his authorship. He had not yet opened a volume of Scott or Cooper, "ces deux grands romanciers." With a friend named Leuven he began to try to write plays (1820-1821). He now poached his way to Paris, defraying his expenses with the game he shot on the road. Shakespeare too was a poacher; let us excuse the eccentricities of genius. He made Talma's acquaintance; he went to the play; he resigned his clerkship: "Paris was my future." Thither he went; his father's name served him with General Foy, and he obtained a little post in the household of the Duc D'Orleans--a supernumerary secretaryship at L60 a year. At the play he met Charles Nodier, reading the rarest of Elzevirs, and at intervals (like Charles Lamb) hissing his own piece! This delightful scene, with its consequences, occupies one hundred and thirty pages!

Dumas now made the acquaintance of Frederic Soulie, and became a pillar of theatres. He began to read with a purpose: first he read Scott; "The clouds lifted, and I beheld new horizons." Then he turned to Cooper; then to Byron. One day he entered his office, crying aloud, "Byron is dead!" "Who is Byron?" said one of his chiefs. Here Dumas breaks off in his 'Memoirs' to give a life of Byron! He fought his first duel in the snow, and won an easy, almost a bloodless victory. For years he and Leuven wrote plays together,--plays which were never accepted.

At last he, Rousseau (not Jean Jacques!), and Leuven composed a piece together. Refused at one house, it was accepted at another: 'La Chasse et l'Amour' (The Chase and Love) was presented on September 22d, 1823. It succeeded. A volume of three short stories sold to the extent of four copies. Dumas saw that he must "make a name" before he could make a livelihood. "I do not believe in neglected talent and unappreciated genius," says he. Like Mr. Arthur Pendennis, he wrote verses "up to" pictures. Thackeray did the same. "Lady Blessington once sent him an album print of a boy and girl fishing, with a request that he would make some verses for it. 'And,' he said, 'I liked the idea, and set about it at once. I was two entire days at it,--was so occupied with it, so engrossed by it, that I did not shave during the whole time.'" So says Mr. Locker-Lampson.

We cannot all be Dumas or Thackeray. But if any literary beginner reads these lines, let him take Dumas's advice; let him disbelieve in neglected genius, and do the work that comes in his way, as best he can. Dumas had a little anonymous success in 1826, a vaudeville at the Porte-Saint-Martin. At last he achieved a serious tragedy, or melodrama, in verse, 'Christine.' He wrote to Nodier, reminding him of their meeting at the play. The author of 'Trilby' introduced him to Taylor; Taylor took him to the Theatre Francais; 'Christine' was read and accepted unanimously.

Dumas now struck the vein of his fortune. By chance he opened a volume of Anquetil, and read an anecdote of the court of Henri III. This led him to study the history of Saint Megrin, in the Memoirs of L'Estoile, where he met Quelus, and Maugiron, and Bussy d'Amboise, with the stirring tale of his last fight against twelve men. Out of these facts he made his play 'Henri III.,' and the same studies inspired that trilogy of romances 'La Reine Margot' (Queen Margot), 'La Dame de Monsoreau' (The Lady of Monsoreau), and 'Les Quarante-Cinq' (The Forty-Five). These are, with the trilogy of the 'Mousquetaires,' his central works as a romancer, and he was twenty-five when he began to deal with the romance of history. His habit was to narrate his play or novel, to his friends, to invent as he talked, and so to arrive at his general plan. The mere writing gave him no trouble. We shall later show his method in the composition of 'The Three Musketeers.'

'Christine' had been wrecked among the cross-currents of theatrical life. 'Henri III.' was more fortunate. Dumas was indeed obliged to choose between his little office and the stage; he abandoned his secretaryship. In 1829 occurred this "duel between his past and his future." Just before the first night of the drama, Dumas's mother, whom he tenderly loved, was stricken down by paralysis. He tended her, he watched over his piece, he almost dragged the Duc d'Orleans to the theatre. On that night he made the acquaintance of Hugo and Alfred de Vigny. Dumas passed the evening between the theatre and his mother's bedside. When the curtain fell, he was "called on"; the audience stood up uncovered, the Duc d'Orleans and all!

Next morning Dumas, like Byron, "woke to find himself famous." He had "made his name" in the only legitimate way,--by his work. Troubles followed, difficulties with the Censorship, duels and rumors of duels, and the whole romantic upheaval which accompanied the Revolution of 1830. Dumas was attached again to the Orleans household. He dabbled in animal magnetism, which had been called mesmerism, and now is known as hypnotism. The phenomena are the same; only the explanations vary. About 1830 there was a mania for animal magnetism in Paris; Lady Louisa Stuart recounted some of the marvels to Sir Walter Scott, who treated the reports with disdain. When writing his romance 'Joseph Balsamo' (a tale of the French Revolution), Dumas made studies of animal magnetism, and was, or believed himself to be, an adept. The orthodox party of modern hypnotists merely hold that by certain physical means, a state of somnambulism can be produced in certain people. Once in that state, the patients are subject, to "suggestion," and are obedient to the will of the hypnotizer. He for his part exerts no "magnetic current," no novel unexplained force or fluid. Some recent French and English experiments are not easily to be reconciled with this hypothesis. Dumas himself believed that he exerted a magnetic force, and without any "passes" or other mechanical means, could hypnotize persons who did not know what he was about, and so were not influenced by "suggestion." In a few cases he held that his patients became clairvoyant; one of them made many political prophecies,--all unfulfilled. Another, in trance, improved vastly as a singer; "her normal voice stopped at _contre-si_. I bade her rise to _contre-re_, which she did; though incapable of it when awake." So far, this justifies the plot of Mr. Du Maurier's novel 'Trilby.' Dumas offers no theory; he states facts, as he says, including "post-hypnotic suggestion."

These experiments were made by Dumas merely as part of his studies for 'Joseph Balsamo' (Cagliostro); his conclusion was that hypnotism is not yet reduced to a scientific formula. In fiction it is already overworked. Dumas got his 'Christine' acted at last. Then broke out the Revolution of 1830. Dumas's description of his activity is "as good as a novel," but too long and varied for condensation. It seems better to give this extract about his life of poverty before his mother died, before fame visited him. (I quote Miss Cheape's translation of the passage included in her 'Stories of Beasts,' published by Longmans, Green and Company.)

He had, in later years, named a cat Mysouff II.

"If you won't think me impertinent, sir," said Madame
Lamarque, "I should so like to know what Mysouff means."

"Mysouff just means Mysouff, Madame Lamarque."

"It is a cat's name, then?"

"Certainly, since Mysouff the First was so-called. It is
true, Madame Lamarque, you never knew Mysouff." And I became
so thoughtful that Madame Lamarque was kind enough to
withdraw quietly, without asking any questions about Mysouff
the First.

That name had taken me back to fifteen years ago, when my
mother was still living. I had then the great happiness of
having a mother to scold me sometimes. At the time I speak
of, I held a situation in the service of the Duc d'Orleans,
with a salary of 1500 francs. My work occupied me from ten in
the morning until five in the afternoon. We had a cat in
those days, whose name was Mysouff. This cat had missed his
vocation; he ought to have been a dog. Every morning I
started for my office at half-past nine, and came back every
evening at half-past five. Every morning Mysouff followed me
to the corner of a particular street, and every evening I
found him in the same street, at the same corner, waiting for
me. Now the curious thing was that on the days when I had
found some amusement elsewhere, and was not coming home to
dinner, it was of no use to open the door for Mysouff to go
and meet me. Mysouff, in the attitude of the serpent with its
tail in its mouth, refused to stir from his cushion. On the
other hand, on the days I did come, Mysouff would scratch at
the door until some one opened it for him. My mother was very
fond of Mysouff; she used to call him her barometer.

"Mysouff marks my good and my bad weather," my dear mother
would say: "the days you come in are my days of sunshine; my
rainy days are when you stay away."

When I came home I used to see Mysouff at the street corner,
sitting quite still and gazing into the distance. As soon as
he caught sight of me, he began to move his tail; then as I
drew nearer, he rose and walked backward and forward across
the pavement with his back arched and his tail in the air.
When I reached him, he jumped up upon me as a dog would have
done, and bounded and played round me as I walked towards the
house; but when I was close to it he dashed in at full speed.
Two seconds after, I used to see my mother at the door.

Never again in this world, but perhaps in the next, I shall
see her standing waiting for me at the door.

That is what I was thinking of, dear readers, when the name
of Mysouff brought back all these recollections; so you
understand why I did not answer Madame Lamarque's question.

The life of Dumas after 1830 need not be followed step by step; indeed, for lack of memoirs, to follow it is by no means easy.

Dumas, by dint of successful plays, and later of successful novels, earned large sums of money--L40,000 in one year, it is said. He traveled far and wide, and compiled books of travel. In the forties, before the Revolution of 1848, he built a kind of Abbotsford of his own, named "Monte Cristo," near St. Germains, and joyously ruined himself. "Monte Cristo," like Abbotsford, has been described as a palace. Now, Abbotsford is so far from being a palace that Mr. Hope Scott, when his wife, Scott's granddaughter, inherited the place, was obliged to build an additional wing.

At Monte Cristo Dumas kept but one man-servant, Michel (his "Tom Purdie"), who was groom, keeper, porter, gardener, and everything. Nor did Dumas ruin himself by paying exorbitant prices for poor lands, as Scott did. His collection of books and curios was no rival for that of Abbotsford. But like Scott, he gave away money to right and left, and he kept open house. He was eaten up by parasites,--beggars, poor greedy hangers-on of letters, secretaries, above all by tribes of musical people. On every side money flowed from him; hard as he worked, largely as he earned, he spent more. His very dog brought in thirteen other dogs to bed and board. He kept monkeys, cats, eagles, a vulture, a perfect menagerie. His own account of these guests may be read in "My Pets"; perhaps the most humorous, good-humored, and amusing of all his works.

The Revolution of 1848 impoverished him and drove him from Monte Cristo; not out of debt to his neighbors. Dumas was a cheerful giver, but did not love to "fritter away his money in paying bills." He started newspapers, such as The Musketeer, and rather lost than gained by a careless editorship. A successful play would enrich him, and he would throw away his gains. He went with Garibaldi on his expedition against the King of Naples, and was received with ingratitude by the Neapolitans.

A friend of Daniel Dunglas Home, the "medium," he accompanied him to Russia, where Home married a lady of a noble and wealthy family. Returned to France, Dumas found his popularity waning. His plays often failed; he had outlived his success and his generation; he had saved nothing; he had to turn in need to his son Alexandre, the famous dramatist. Finally he died, doubting the security of his own fame, in the year of the sorrows of France.

Dumas is described by Michelet as "a force of nature." Never was there in modern literature a force more puissant, more capricious, or more genial. His quantity of mind was out of all proportion to its quality. He could learn everything with ease; he was a skilled cook, a fencer; he knew almost as if by intuition the technique and terminology of all arts and crafts. Ignorant of Greek, he criticized and appreciated Homer with an unmatched zest and appreciation. Into the dry bones of history he breathed life, mere names becoming full-blooded fellow-creatures under his spell. His inspiration was derived from Scott, a man far more learned than he, but scarcely better gifted with creative energy. Like Scott he is long, perhaps prolix; like him he is indifferent to niceties of style, does not linger over the choice of words, but serves himself with the first that comes to hand. Scott's wide science of human nature is not his; but his heroes, often rather ruffianly, are seldom mere exemplary young men of no particular mark. More brilliantly and rapidly than Scott, he indicates action in dialogue. He does not aim at the construction of rounded plots; his novels are chronicles which need never stop while his heroes are alive. His plan is to take a canvas of fact, in memoir or history, and to embroider his fantasies on that. Occasionally the canvas (as Mr. Saintsbury says) shows through, and we have blocks of actual history. His 'Joan of Arc' begins as a romance, and ends with a comparatively plain statement of facts too great for any art but Shakespeare's. But as a rule it is not historical facts, it is the fictitious adventures of characters living in an historical atmosphere, that entertain us in Dumas.