reason to be vain, and no candid or generous reader will be shocked by
his pleasant, frank, and artless enjoyment of himself and of his
adventures. Oddly enough, they are small-minded and small-hearted people
who are most shocked by what they call "vanity" in the great. Dumas'
delight in himself and his doings is only the flower of his vigorous
existence, and in his "Memoires," at least, it is as happy and
encouraging as his laugh, or the laugh of Porthos; it is a kind of
radiance, in which others, too, may bask and enjoy themselves. And yet
it is resented by tiny scribblers, frozen in their own chill
self-conceit.

There is nothing incredible (if modern researches are accurate) in the
stories he tells of his own success in Hypnotism, as it is called now,
Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was called then. Who was likely to possess
these powers, if not this good-humoured natural force? "I believe that,
by aid of magnetism, a bad man might do much mischief. I doubt whether,
by help of magnetism, a good man can do the slightest good," he says,
probably with perfect justice. His dramatic success fired Victor Hugo,
and very pleasant it is to read Dumas' warm-hearted praise of that great
poet. Dumas had no jealousy--no more than Scott. As he believed in no
success without talent, so he disbelieved in genius which wins no
success. "Je ne crois pas au talent ignore, au genie inconnu, moi."
Genius he saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about invisible
and inaudible genius; and I own to sharing his scepticism. People who
complain of Dumas' vanity may be requested to observe that he seems just
as "vain" of Hugo's successes, or of Scribe's, as of his own, and just as
much delighted by them.

He was now struck, as he walked on the boulevard one day, by the first
idea of _Antony_--an idea which, to be fair, seems rather absurd than
tragic, to some tastes. "A lover, caught with a married woman, kills her
to save her character, and dies on the scaffold." Here is indeed a part
to tear a cat in!

* * * * *

The performances of M. Dumas during the Revolution of 1830, are they not
written in the Book of the Chronicles of Alexandre the Great? But they
were not literary excellences which he then displayed, and we may leave
this king-maker to hover, "like an eagle, above the storms of anarchy."

Even to sketch his later biography is beyond our province. In 1830 he
had forty years to run, and he filled the cup of t