Friendship. I
declare your characters are real people to me and old friends. I cannot
bear to read the end of 'Bragelonne,' and to part with them for ever.
'Suppose Perthos, Athos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless
swagger, curling their moustaches.' How we would welcome them, forgiving
D'Artagnan even his hateful _fourberie_ in the case of Milady. The
brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached: there is wit
everywhere; repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink
of small-swords. Then what duels are yours! and what inimitable
battle-pieces! I know four good fights of one against a multitude,
in literature. These are the Death of Gretir the Strong, the Death of
Gunnar of Lithend, the Death of Hereward the Wake, the Death of Bussy
d'Amboise. We can compare the strokes of the heroic fighting-times with
those described in later days; and, upon my word, I do not know that the
short sword of Gretir, or the bill of Skarphedin, or the bow of Gunnar
was better wielded than the rapier of your Bussy or the sword and shield
of Kingsley's Hereward.

They say your fencing is unhistorical; no doubt it is so, and you knew
it. La Mole could not have lunged on Coconnas 'after deceiving circle;'
for the parry was not invented except by your immortal Chicot, a genius
in advance of his time. Even so Hamlet and Laertes would have fought
with shields and axes, not with small swords. But what matters this
pedantry? In your works we hear the Homeric Muse again, rejoicing in the
clash of steel; and even, at times, your very phrases are unconsciously
Homeric.

Look at these men of murder, on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, who flee in
terror from the Queen's chamber, and 'find the door too narrow for their
flight:' the very words were anticipated in a line of the 'Odyssey'
concerning the massacre of the Wooers. And the picture of Catherine de
Medicis, prowling 'like a wolf among the bodies and the blood,' in
a passage of the Louvre--the picture is taken unwittingly from the
'Iliad.' There was in you that reserve of primitive force, that epic
grandeur and simplicity of diction. This is the force that animates
'Monte Cristo,' the earlier chapters, the prison, and the escape. In
later volumes of that romance, methinks, you stoop your wing. Of your
dramas I have little room, and less skill, to speak. 'Antony,' they tell
me, was 'the greatest literary event of its time,' was a restoration of
the stage. 'While Victor Hugo needs