he had been sold by the Scotch, direct from Newcastle
to London, tried at once, and executed in a day or two. This was not the
way things happened"--you are bound to acknowledge his profound and
recondite historical learning. But if he goes on to say that he cannot
enjoy _Vingt Ans Apres_ as a novel because of this, you are equally
bound to pity his still more profound aesthetic ignorance and impotence.
The facts, in regard to the criticism of historical novels as such,
illustrate the wisdom of Scott in keeping his historical characters for
the most part in the background, and the _un_wisdom of Vigny in
preferring the opposite course. But they do nothing more. If Dumas had
chosen, he might have separated the dramatic meeting of the Four at
Newcastle itself--and the intenser tale of their effort to save Charles,
with its sequel of their own narrow escape from the _Eclair_ felucca--by
chapters, or a book, of adventures in France. But he did not choose; and
the liberty of juxtaposition which he took is more apparently than
really different from that which Shakespeare takes, when he jumps ten
years in _Antony and Cleopatra_. What Dumas _really_ borrows from
history--the tragic interest of the King's fate--is in each case
historically true, though it is eked and adapted and manipulated to suit
the fictitious interest of the Quadrilateral. You certainly could not,
then or now, _ride_ from Windsor to London in twenty minutes, though you
could now motor the distance in the time, at the risk of considerable
fines. And an Englishman, jealous of his country's honour, might urge
that, while the "Vin _de Porto_" itself came in rather later, there were
few places in the England of the seventeenth century where that "Vin
_d'Espagne_," so dear to Athos, was not more common than it was in
France, though one would not venture to deny that the shortly-to-become
Baron de Bracieux _had_ some genuine Xeres (as we are told) in his
cellar. But these things are--no more and no less than the greater
ones--utter trifles as far as the actual novel interest is concerned.
They are, indeed, less than trifles: they can hardly be said to exist.

[Sidenote: His attitude to Plot.]

The "four wheels of the novel" have been sometimes, and perhaps rightly,
said to be Plot, Character, Description, and Dialogue--Style[321] being
a sort of fifth. Of the first there is some difficulty in speaking,
because the word "plot" is by no means used, as the text-books s