its
quiddity, so to speak, and resolved into its original elements. On the
other hand, it pleased such painful creatures as MM. Querard and 'Eugene
de Mirecourt,' as it has since pleased Messrs. Hitchman and Fitzgerald to
consider the second- and third-rate literary persons whom Dumas
assimilated in such numbers as of greater interest and higher merit than
Dumas. To them the jackals were far nobler than the lion, and they
worked their hardest in the interest of the pack. It was their mission
to decompose and disintegrate the magnificent entity which M. Blaze de
Bury very happily nicknames 'Dumas-Legion,' and in the process not to
render his own unto Caesar but to take from him all that was Caesar's,
and divide it among the mannikins he had absorbed. And their work was in
its way well done; for have we not seen M. Brunetiere exulting in
agreement and talking of Dumas as one less than Eugene Sue and not much
bigger than Gaillardet? Of course the ultimate issue of the debate is
not doubtful. Dumas remains to the end a prodigy of force and industry,
a miracle of cleverness and accomplishment and ease, a type of generous
and abundant humanity, a great artist in many varieties of form, a prince
of talkers and story-tellers, one of the kings of the stage, a benefactor
of his epoch and his kind; while of those who assisted him in the
production of his immense achievement the most exist but as fractions of
the larger sum, and the others have utterly disappeared. 'Combien,' says
his son in that excellent page which serves to preface _le Fils
Naturel_--'combien parmi ceux qui devaient rester obscurs se sont
eclaires et chauffes a ta forge, et si l'heure des restitutions sonnait,
quel gain pour toi, rien qu'a reprendre ce que tu as donne et ce qu'on
t'a pris!' That is the true verdict of posterity, and he does well who
abides by it.

Himself.

He is one of the heroes of modern art. Envy and scandal have done their
worst now. The libeller has said his say; the detectives who make a
specialty of literary forgeries have proved their cases one and all; the
judges of matter have spoken, and so have the critics of style; the
distinguished author of _Nana_ has taken us into his confidence on the
subject; we have heard from the lamented Granier and others as much as
was to be heard on the question of plagiarism in general and the
plagiarisms of Dumas in particular; and Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has done
what he is pleased to d