aults in its general scheme.]

Now I have more than once in this very book, and often elsewhere,
contended, rightly or wrongly, that this "practice of the foreigners,"
in _not_ making dominant historical characters their own dominant
personages, is _the_ secret of success in historical novel-writing, and
the very feather (and something more) in the cap of Scott himself which
shows his chieftainship. And, again rightly or wrongly, I have also
contended that the hand of purpose deadens and mummifies story. Vigny's
own remarks, despite subsequent--if not recantation--qualification of
them, show that the lie of his land, the tendency of his exertion, _was_
in these two, as I think, wrong directions. And I own that this
explained to me what I had chiefly before noticed as merely a fact,
without enquiring into it, that _Cinq-Mars_, admirably written as it is;
possessing as it does, with a hero who might have been made interesting,
a great person like Richelieu to make due and not undue use of; plenty
of thrilling incident at hand, and some actually brought in; love
interest _ad libitum_ and fighting hardly less so; a tragic finish from
history, and opportunity for plenty of lighter contrast from Tallemant
and the Memoirs--that, I say, _Cinq-Mars_, with all this and the
greatness of its author in other work, has always been to me not a live
book, and hardly one which I can even praise as statuesque.[248]

It is no doubt a misfortune for the book with its later readers--the
earlier for nearly twenty years were free from this--that it comes into
closest comparison with Dumas' best work. Its action, indeed, takes
place in the very "Vingt Ans" during which we know (except from slight
retrospect) nothing of what D'Artagnan and the Three were doing. But
more than one or two of the same historical characters figure, and in
the chapters dealing with the obscure _emeute_ which preceded the actual
conspiracy, as well as in the scenes touching Anne of Austria's private
apartments, the parallel is very close indeed.

[Sidenote: And in its details.]

Now of course Dumas could not write like Vigny; and though, as is
pointed out elsewhere, to regard him as a vulgar fellow is the grossest
of blunders as well as a great injustice, Vigny, in thought and taste
and _dianoia_ generally, was as far above him as in style.[249] But that
is not the question. I have said[250] that I do not quite _know_
D'Artagnan, though I think I know Athos, as a m