of Buckingham, in that magnificent prose epic? There is little to be
said for the real Villiers; he was a profligate and a scoundrel, and he
did not show very heroically in his quarrel with the fiery young Ossory.
It was one thing to practically murder Lord Shrewsbury; it was quite
another thing to risk the wrath and the determined right hand of the
Duke of Ormond's son. But the Villiers of Dumas' fancy is a fairer
figure and a finer lover, and it is pleasant after reading the pages in
which the authors of these essays trace the career of Dryden's epitome
to turn to those volumes of the great Frenchman, to read the account of
the duel with de Wardes and invoke a new blessing on the muse of
fiction.

In some earlier volumes of the same great series we meet with yet
another figure who has his image in the Wharton picture gallery. In that
"crowded and sunny field of life"--the words are Mr. Stevenson's, and
they apply to the whole musketeer epic--that "place busy as a city,
bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with
delightful speech," the Abbé Scarron plays his part. It was here that
many of us met Scarron for the first time, and if we have got to know
him better since, we still remember with a thrill of pleasure that first
encounter when in the society of the matchless Count de la Fere and the
marvellous Aramis we made our bow in company with the young Raoul to the
crippled wit and his illustrious companions. The Whartons write brightly
about Scarron, but their best merit to my mind is that they at once
prompt a desire to go to that corner of the bookshelf where the eleven
volumes of the adventures of the immortal musketeers repose, and taking
down the first volume of "Vingt Ans Après" seek for the twenty-third
chapter, where Scarron receives society in his residence in the Rue des
Tournelles. There Scudery twirls his moustaches and trails his enormous
rapier and the Coadjutor exhibits his silken "Fronde". There the velvet