e only one he could call his own)--with a
camp-bed and the deal table at which he wrote. He passed for a
loud-mouthed idler; and during many years his daily average of work was
fourteen hours for months on end. 'Ivre de puissance,' says George Sand
of him, but 'foncierement bon.' They used to hear him laughing as he
wrote, and when he killed Porthos he did no more that day. It would have
been worth while to figure as one of the crowd of friends and parasites
who lived at rack and manger in his house, for the mere pleasure of
seeing him descend upon them from his toil of moving mountains and
sharing in that pleasing half-hour of talk which was his common
refreshment. After that he would return to the attic and the deal table,
and move more mountains. With intervals of travel, sport, adventure, and
what in France is called 'l'amour'--(it is strange, by the way, that he
was never a hero of Carlyle's)--he lived in this way more or less for
forty years or so; and when he left Paris for the last time he had but
two napoleons in his pocket. 'I had only one when I came here first,'
quoth he, 'and yet they call me a spendthrift.' That was his way; and
while the result is not for Dr. Smiles to chronicle, I for one persist in
regarding the spirit in which it was accepted as not less exemplary than
delightful.

His Monument.

On M. du Camp's authority there is a charming touch to add to his son's
description of him. 'Il me semble,' said the royal old prodigal in his
last illness, 'que je suis au sommet d'un monument qui tremble comme si
les fondations etaient assises sur le sable.' 'Sois en paix,' replied
the author of the _Demi-Monde_: 'le monument est bien bati, et la base
est solide.' He was right, as we know. It is good and fitting that
Dumas should have a monument in the Paris he amazed and delighted and
amused so long. But he could have done without one. In what language is
he not read? and where that he is read is he not loved? '_Exegi
monumentum_,' he might have said: 'and wherever romance is a necessary of
life, there shall you look for it, and not in vain.'

GEORGE MEREDITH

His Qualities.

To read Mr. Meredith's novels with insight is to find them full of the
rarest qualities in fiction. If their author has a great capacity for
unsatisfactory writing he has capacities not less great for writing that
is satisfactory in the highest degree. He has the tragic instinct and
endowment, and