s best, as in the
"Chevalier d'Harmenthal," he has movement, kindness, courage, and gaiety.
His philosophy of life is that old philosophy of the sagas and of Homer.
Let us enjoy the movement of the fray, the faces of fair women, the taste
of good wine; let us welcome life like a mistress, let us welcome death
like a friend, and with a jest--if death comes with honour.

Dumas is no pessimist. "Heaven has made but one drama for man--the
world," he writes, "and during these three thousand years mankind has
been hissing it." It is certain that, if a moral censorship could have
prevented it, this great drama of mortal passions would never have been
licensed, at all, never performed. But Dumas, for one, will not hiss it,
but applauds with all his might--a charmed spectator, a fortunate actor
in the eternal piece, where all the men and women are only players. You
hear his manly laughter, you hear his mighty hands approving, you see the
tears he sheds when he had "slain Porthos"--great tears like those of
Pantagruel.

* * * * *

His may not be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it _is_ a
philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the want. I read the
stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings of some modern men who cannot
write their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of date. There
is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of dallyings and
refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and fearing some new
order of the world. Dumas does not dally nor doubt: he takes his side,
he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his foe; but there is never an
unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging thought in his heart.

It may be said that Dumas is not a master of words and phrases, that he
is not a _raffine_ of expression, nor a jeweller of style. When I read
the maunderings, the stilted and staggering sentences, the hesitating
phrases, the far-sought and dear-bought and worthless word-juggles; the
sham scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of many modern so-called
"stylists," I rejoice that Dumas was not one of these. He told a plain
tale, in the language suited to a plain tale, with abundance of wit and
gaiety, as in the reflections of his Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But
he did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that nobody had
ever used in this or that connection before. The right word came to him,
the simple straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty
spo