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.



LETTER--To Theocritus