s Chicot does? make her forget, as
Porthos, Athos, and Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar
time, as the enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these
new authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, _precieux_, pitiful,
charitable, veracious; but give us high spirits now and then, a light
heart, a sharp sword, a fair wench, a good horse, or even that old Gascon
rouncy of D'Artagnan's. Like the good Lord James Douglas, we had liefer
hear the lark sing over moor and down, with Chicot, than listen to the
starved-mouse squeak in the _bouge_ of Therese Raquin, with M. Zola. Not
that there is not a place and an hour for him, and others like him; but
they are not, if you please, to have the whole world to themselves, and
all the time, and all the praise; they are not to turn the world into a
dissecting-room, time into tedium, and the laurels of Scott and Dumas
into crowns of nettles.

There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not produced
the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that labour. One of
the worst books that ever was written, if it can be said to be written,
is, I think, the English attempt at a biography of Dumas. Style,
grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author does not so much write
a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his work is grudging,
sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully peddling. The great charge is that
Dumas was a humbug, that he was not the author of his own books, that his
books were written by "collaborators"--above all, by M. Maquet. There is
no doubt that Dumas had a regular system of collaboration, which he never
concealed. But whereas Dumas could turn out books that _live_, whoever
his assistants were, could any of his assistants write books that live,
without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister in good practice a
thief and an impostor because he has juniors to "devil" for him, as make
charges of this kind against Dumas. He once asked his son to help him;
the younger Alexandre declined. "It is worth a thousand a year, and you
have only to make objections," the sire urged; but the son was not to be
tempted. Some excellent novelists of to-day would be much better if they
employed a friend to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator
did much more. Dumas' method, apparently, was first to talk the subject
over with his _aide-de-camp_. This is an excellent practice, as ideas
are knocked out, like spark