not out of debt to his neighbors. Dumas was a cheerful giver,
but did not love to "fritter away his money in paying bills." He
started newspapers, such as The Musketeer, and rather lost than gained
by a careless editorship. A successful play would enrich him, and he
would throw away his gains. He went with Garibaldi on his expedition
against the King of Naples, and was received with ingratitude by the
Neapolitans.

A friend of Daniel Dunglas Home, the "medium," he accompanied him to
Russia, where Home married a lady of a noble and wealthy family.
Returned to France, Dumas found his popularity waning. His plays often
failed; he had outlived his success and his generation; he had saved
nothing; he had to turn in need to his son Alexandre, the famous
dramatist. Finally he died, doubting the security of his own fame, in
the year of the sorrows of France.

Dumas is described by Michelet as "a force of nature." Never was there
in modern literature a force more puissant, more capricious, or more
genial. His quantity of mind was out of all proportion to its quality.
He could learn everything with ease; he was a skilled cook, a fencer;
he knew almost as if by intuition the technique and terminology of all
arts and crafts. Ignorant of Greek, he criticized and appreciated
Homer with an unmatched zest and appreciation. Into the dry bones of
history he breathed life, mere names becoming full-blooded
fellow-creatures under his spell. His inspiration was derived from
Scott, a man far more learned than he, but scarcely better gifted with
creative energy. Like Scott he is long, perhaps prolix; like him he is
indifferent to niceties of style, does not linger over the choice of
words, but serves himself with the first that comes to hand. Scott's
wide science of human nature is not his; but his heroes, often rather
ruffianly, are seldom mere exemplary young men of no particular mark.
More brilliantly and rapidly than Scott, he indicates action in
dialogue. He does not aim at the construction of rounded plots; his
novels are chronicles which need never stop while his heroes are
alive. His plan is to take a canvas of fact, in memoir or history, and
to embroider his fantasies on that. Occasionally the canvas (as Mr.
Saintsbury says) shows through, and we have blocks of actual history.
His 'Joan of Arc' begins as a romance, and ends with a comparatively
plain statement of facts too great for any art but Shakespeare's. But
as a rule it is not