nsiderably to the excitement of one's
existence--so long as it continued. But I am not sure that I _know_ them
as I know Marianne and Des Grieux, Tom Jones and My Uncle Toby, the
Baron of Bradwardine and Elizabeth Bennet. Athos I know or should know
if I met him, which I am sorry to say I have not yet done; and La Reine
Margot, and possibly Olympe de Cleves; but there is more guess-work
about the knowledge with her than in the other cases. Porthos (or
somebody very like him) I did know, and he was most agreeable; but he
died too soon to go into the army, as he ought to have done, after
leaving Oxford. And though I never met a complete Aramis, I think I have
met him in parts. There are not many more of this class. On the other
hand, there is almost an entire absence in Dumas of those mere
lay-figures which are so common in other novelists. There is great
plenty of something more than toy-theatre characters cut out well and
brightly painted, fit to push across the stage and justify their "words"
and vanish; but that is a different thing.

And this leads us partly back and partly up to the second head, the
provision of characters sufficiently distinguished from others, and so
capable of playing their parts effectually and interestingly. It is in
this that he is so good, and it is this which distinguishes himself from
all his fellows but the very greatest. D'Artagnan and Chicot are again
the best; but how good, at least in the better books, are almost all the
others! D'Artagnan would be a frightful loss, but suppose he were not
there and you knew nothing about him, would you not think Planchet
something of a prize? Without Chicot there would be a blank horrible to
think of. But do we not still "share"? Have we not Dom Gorenflot?

It is in this provision of vivid and sufficiently, if not absolutely,
vivified characters and personages--"company" for his narrative
dramas--that Dumas is so admirable under this particular head. If they
are rarely detachable or independent, they work out the business
consummately. Lackeys and ladies' maids, inn-keepers and casual guests
at inns, courtiers and lawyers, noblemen and "lower classes," they all
do what they ought to do; they all "answer the ends of their being
created,"--which is to carry out and on, through two or three or half a
dozen volumes, a blissful suspension from the base realities of
existence. And if anybody asks of them more than this, it is his own
fault, and a very grea