|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 26
In these romances how easy it would have been for you to burn incense to that
great goddess, Lubricity, whom our critic says your people worship. You had
Branto'me, you had Tallemant, you had Re'tif, and a dozen others, to furnish
materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone
even the present _naturalistes_. From these alcoves of 'Les Dames Galantes,'
and from the torture chambers (M. Zola would not have spared us one starting
sinew of brave La Mole on the rack) you turned, as Scott would have turned,
without a thought of their profitable literary uses. You had other metal to
work on: you gave us that superstitious and tragical true love of La Mole's,
that devotion--how tender and how pure!--of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau.
You gave us the valour of D'Artagnan, the strength of Porthos, the melancholy
nobility of Athos: Honour, Chivalry, and Friendship. I declare your characters
are real people to me and old friends. I cannot bear to read the end of
'Bragelonne,' and to part with them for ever. 'Suppose Perthos, Athos, and
Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches.' How
we would welcome them, forgiving D'Artagnan even his hateful _fourberie_ in
the case of Milady. The brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached:
there is wit everywhere; repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink
of small-swords. Then what duels are yours! and what inimitable battle-pieces!
I know four good fights of one against a multitude, in literature. These are
the Death of Gretir the Strong, the Death of Gunnar of Lithend, the Death of
Hereward the Wake, the Death of Bussy d'Amboise. We can compare the strokes of
the heroic fighting-times with those described in later days; and, upon my
word, I do not know that the short sword of Gretir, or the bill of Skarphedin,
or the bow of Gunnar was better wielded than the rapier of your Bussy or the
sword and shield of Kingsley's Hereward.
They say your fencing is unhistorical; no doubt it is so, and you knew it. La
Mole could not have lunged on Coconnas 'after deceiving circle;' for the parry
was not invented except by your immortal Chicot, a genius in advance of his
time. Even so Hamlet and Laertes would have fought with shields and axes, not
with small swords. But what matters this pedantry? In your works we hear the
Homeric Muse again, rejoicing in the clash of steel; and even, at times, your
very phrases are unconsciously Homeric.
Look at these men of murder, on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, who flee in terror
from the Queen's chamber, and 'find the door too narrow for their flight:' the
very words were anticipated in a line of the 'Odyssey' concerning the massacre
of the Wooers. And the picture of Catherine de Medicis, prowling 'like a wolf
among the bodies and the blood,' in a passage of the Louvre--the picture is
taken unwittingly from the 'Iliad.' There was in you that reserve of primitive
force, that epic grandeur and simplicity of diction. This is the force that
animates 'Monte Cristo,' the earlier chapters, the prison, and the escape. In
later volumes of that romance, methinks, you stoop your wing. Of your dramas I
have little room, and less skill, to speak. 'Antony,' they tell me, was 'the
greatest literary event of its time,' was a restoration of the stage. 'While
Victor Hugo needs the cast-off clothes of history, the wardrobe and costume,
the sepulchre of Charlemagne, the ghost of Barbarossa, the coffins of Lucretia
Borgia, Alexandre Dumas requires no more than a room in an inn, where people
meet in riding cloaks, to move the soul with the last degree of terror and of
pity.'
The reproach of being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame--for a moment. The
shadow of this tyranny will soon be overpast; and when 'La Cure'e' and
'Pot-Bouille' are more forgotten than 'Le Grand Cyrus,' men and women--and,
above all, boys--will laugh and weep over the page of Alexandre Dumas. Like
Scott himself, you take us captive in our childhood. I remember a very idle
little boy who was busy with the 'Three Musketeers' when he should have been
occupied with 'Wilkins's Latin Prose.' 'Twenty years after' (alas and more) he
is still constant to that gallant company; and, at this very moment, is
breathlessly wondering whether Grimand will steal M. de Beaufort out of the
Cardinal's prison.
XIII.
To Theocritus
'Sweet, methinks, is the whispering sound of yonder pine-tree,' so,
Theocritus, with that sweet word _ade_*, didst thou begin and strike the
keynote of thy songs. 'Sweet,' and didst thou find aught of sweet, when thou,
like thy Daphnis, didst 'go down the stream, when the whirling wave closed
over the man the Muses loved, the man not hated of the Nymphs?' Perchance
below those waters of death thou didst find, like thine own Hylas, the lovely
Nereids waiting thee, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia with her April eyes. In
the House of Hades, Theocritus, doth there dwell aught that is fair, and can
the low light on the fields of asphodel make thee forget thy Sicily? Nay,
methinks thou hast not forgotten, and perchance for poets dead there is
prepared a place more beautiful than their dreams. It was well for the later
minstrels of another day, it was well for Ronsard and Du Bellay to desire a
dim Elysium of their own, where the sunlight comes faintly through the shadow
of the earth, where the poplars are duskier, and the waters more pale than in
the meadows of Anjou.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|