t fault too.[322]

[Sidenote: To Description (and "style").]

Of Description, as of the "fifth wheel" style, there is little to say
about Dumas, though the littleness is in neither respect damaging. They
are both adequate to the situation and the composition. Can you say much
more of him or of anybody? If it were worth while to go into detail at
all, this adequacy could be made out, I think, a good deal more than
sufficiently. Take one of his greatest things, the "Bastion
Saint-Gervais" in the _Mousquetaires_. If he has not made you see the
heroic hopeless town, and the French leaguer and the shattered redoubt
between, and the forlorn hope of the Four foolhardy yet forethoughtful
and for ever delightful heroes, with their not so cheerful followers,
eating, drinking, firing, consulting, and flaunting the immortal
napkin-pennant in the enemy's face--you would not be made to see it,
though the authors of _Ines de las Sierras_ or of _Le Chateau de la
Misere_ had given you a cast of their office. And, what is more, the
method of _Ines de las Sierras_ and of _Le Chateau de la Misere_ would
have been actually out of place. It would have got in the way of the
business, the engrossing business, of the manual fight against the
Rochellois, and the spiritual fight against Richelieu and Rochefort and
Milady. So, again--so almost tautologically--with "style" in the more
complicated and elaborate sense of the word. One may here once more
thank Emile de Girardin for the phrase that he used of Gautier's own
style in _feuilleton_ attempts. It _would_ be _genant pour
l'abonne_--even for an _abonne_ who was not the first comer. It is not
the beautiful phrase, over which you can linger, that is required, but
the straightforward competent word-vehicle that carries you on through
the business, that you want in such work. The essence of Dumas' quality
is to find or make his readers thirsty, and to supply their thirst. You
can't quench thirst with _liqueurs_; if you are not a Philistine you
will not quench it with vintage port or claret, with Chateau Yquem, or
even with fifteen-year-old Clicquot. A "long" whisky and potash, a
bottle of sound Medoc, or, best of all, a pewter quart of not too small
or too strong beer--these are the modest but sufficient quenchers that
suit the case. And Dumas gives you just the equivalents of these.

[Sidenote: To Conversation.]

But it may seem that, for the last head or two, the defence has been a
little "l