esignate the 'nightman's work' of analysing
_Antony_ and _Kean_, and of collecting everything that spite has said
about their author's life, their author's habits, their author's manners
and customs and character: of whose vanity, mendacity, immorality, a
score of improper qualities besides, enough has been written to furnish a
good-sized library. And the result of it all is that Dumas is recognised
for a force in modern art and for one of the greatest inventors and
amusers the century has produced. Whole crowds of men were named as the
real authors of his books and plays; but they were only readable when he
signed for them. His ideas were traced to a hundred originals; but they
had all seemed worthless till he took them in hand and developed them
according to their innate capacity. The French he wrote was popular, and
the style at his command was none of the loftiest, as his critics have
often been at pains to show; but he was for all that an artist at once
original and exemplary, with an incomparable instinct of selection, a
constructive faculty not equalled among the men of this century, an
understanding of what is right and what is wrong in art and a mastery of
his materials which in their way are not to be paralleled in the work of
Sir Walter himself. Like Napoleon, he was 'a natural force let loose';
and if he had done no more than achieve universal renown as the prince of
_raconteurs_ and a commanding position as a novelist wherever novels are
read he would still have done much. But he did a vast deal more. A
natural force, he wrought in the right direction, as natural forces must
and do. He amused the world for forty years and more; but he also
contributed something to the general sum of the world's artistic
experience and capacity, and his contribution is of permanent worth and
charm. He has left us stories which are models of the enchanting art of
narrative; and, with a definition good and comprehensive enough to
include all the best work which has been produced for the theatre from
AEschylus down to Augier, from the _Choephorae_ on to _le Gendre de M.
Poirier_, he has given us types of the romantic and the domestic drama,
which, new when he produced them, are even now not old, and which as
regards essentials have yet to be improved upon. The form and aim of the
modern drama, as we know it, have been often enough ascribed to the
ingenious author of _une Chaine_ and the _Verre d'Eau_; but they might
wit