Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/353

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ALEXANDRE DUMAS
317

Rossetti has kindly confirmed this record with his own testimony.

"It is perfectly truc," he writes, "that my brother took the greatest delight in reading Dumas, and I think it may be said that, if he had been asked 'whom do you regard as the greatest novelist that ever existed—in those qualities which are most essential for novel-writing?' he would have replied 'Dumas.' Of course he would at the same time have been conscious that Walter Scott, as a precursor of Dumas, had to some extent served him as a pattern."[1]

Henley strikes the same note of praise. "Dumas is assuredly one of the greatest masters of the art of narrative in all literature," he says, and amplifies his assertion thus: "He was an artist at once original and exemplary, with an incomparable instinct of selection, a constructive faculty not equalled among the men of this century, an understanding of what is right and what is wrong in art, and a mastery of his materials which in their way are not to be paralleled in the work of Sir Walter himself."

The frequent references to Scott force us without

  1. Another passage in this letter is interesting, in connection with much that has been written above. "In my very early years—say 1846-7," adds Mr Rossetti, "my brother and I knew more of Dumas as a dramatist than novelist. 'Don Juan de Marana' was our favourite; next might come 'Antony' and 'Caligula.' 'Kean' we used to laugh over, for its amusing travestie of English manners and Customs."