h much greater truth be ascribed to the author of _Antony_ and _la
Tour de Nesle_. Scribe invents and eludes where Dumas invents and dares.
The theory of Scribe is one of mere dexterity: his drama is a perpetual
_chasse-croise_ at the edge of a precipice, a dance of puppets among
swords that might but will not cut and eggs that might but will not
break; to him a situation is a kind of tight-rope to be crossed with ever
so much agility and an endless affectation of peril by all his characters
in turn: in fact, as M. Dumas _fils_ has said of him, he is 'le
Shakespeare des ombres chinoises.' The theory of Dumas is the very
antipodes of this. 'All I want,' he said in a memorable comparison
between himself and Victor Hugo, 'is four trestles, four boards, two
actors, and a passion'; and his good plays are a proof that in this he
spoke no more than the truth. Drama to him was so much emotion in
action. If he invented a situation he accepted its issues in their
entirety, and did his utmost to express from it all the passion it
contained. That he fails to reach the highest peaks of emotional effect
is no fault of his: to do that something more is needed than a perfect
method, something other than a great ambition and an absolute certainty
of touch; and Dumas was neither a Shakespeare nor an AEschylus--he was
not even an Augier. All the same, he has produced in _la Tour de Nesle_
a romantic play which M. Zola himself pronounces the ideal of the _genre_
and in _Antony_ an achievement in drawing-room tragedy which is out of
all questioning the first, and in the opinion of a critic so competent
and so keen as the master's son is probably the strongest, thing of its
kind in modern literature. On this latter play it were difficult, I
think, to bestow too much attention. It is touched, even tainted, with
the manner and the affectation of its epoch. But it is admirably
imagined and contrived; it is very daring, and it is very new; it deals
with the men and women of 1830, and--with due allowance for differences
of manners, ideal, and personal genius--it is in its essentials a play in
the same sense as _Othello_ and the _Trachiniae_ are plays in theirs. It
is the beginning, as I believe, not only of _les Lionnes Pauvres_ but of
_Therese Raquin_ and _la Glu_ as well: just as _la Tour de Nesle_ is the
beginning of _Patrie_ and _la Haine_.

At Least.

And if these greater and loftier pretensions be still contested; if the
t