heroine will too often start the trick of "getting ugly;" and no

disease is more difficult to cure. I said authors; but indeed I
had a side eye to one author in particular, with whose works I am

very well acquainted, though I cannot read them, and who has spent
many vigils in this cause, sitting beside his ailing puppets and

(like a magician) wearying his art to restore them to youth and
beauty. There are others who ride too high for these misfortunes.

Who doubts the loveliness of Rosalind? Arden itself was not more
lovely. Who ever questioned the perennial charm of Rose Jocelyn,

Lucy Desborough, or Clara Middleton? fair women with fair names,
the daughters of George Meredith. Elizabeth Bennet has but to

speak, and I am at her knees. Ah! these are the creators of
desirable women. They would never have fallen in the mud with

Dumas and poor La Valliere. It is my only consolation that not one
of all of them, except the first, could have plucked at the

moustache of d'Artagnan.
Or perhaps, again, a proportion of readers stumble at the

threshold. In so vast a mansion there were sure to be back stairs
and kitchen offices where no one would delight to linger; but it

was at least unhappy that the vestibule should be so badly lighted;
and until, in the seventeenth chapter, d'Artagnan sets off to seek

his friends, I must confess, the book goes heavily enough. But,
from thenceforward, what a feast is spread! Monk kidnapped;

d'Artagnan enriched; Mazarin's death; the ever delectable adventure
of Belle Isle, wherein Aramis outwits d'Artagnan, with its epilogue

(vol. v. chap. xxviii.), where d'Artagnan regains the moral
superiority; the love adventures at Fontainebleau, with St.

Aignan's story of the dryad and the business of de Guiche, de
Wardes, and Manicamp; Aramis made general of the Jesuits; Aramis at

the bastille; the night talk in the forest of Senart; Belle Isle
again, with the death of Porthos; and last, but not least, the

taming of d'Artagnan the untamable, under the lash of the young
King. What other novel has such epic variety and nobility of

incident? often, if you will, impossible; often of the order of an
Arabian story; and yet all based in human nature. For if you come

to that, what novel has more human nature? not studied with the
microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural

eye? What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and wit, and
unflagging, admirableliterary skill? Good souls, I suppose, must

sometimes read it in the blackguard travesty of a translation. But
there is no style so untranslatable; light as a whipped trifle,

strong as silk; wordy like a village tale; pat like a general's
despatch; with every fault, yet never tedious; with no merit, yet

inimitably right. And, once more, to make an end of commendations,
what novel is inspired with a more unstained or a more wholesome

morality?
Yes; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me to the name of

d'Artagnan only to dissuade me from a nearer knowledge of the man,
I have to add morality. There is no quite good book without a good

morality; but the world is wide, and so are morals. Out of two
people who have dipped into Sir Richard Burton's THOUSAND AND ONE

NIGHTS, one shall have been offended by the animal details; another
to whom these were harmless, perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have

been shocked in his turn by the rascality and cruelty of all the
characters. Of two readers, again, one shall have been pained by

the morality of a religious memoir, one by that of the VICOMTE DE
BRAGELONNE. And the point is that neither need be wrong. We shall

always shock each other both in life and art; we cannot get the sun
into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there be such a

thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, there glimmer some
hint of the great light that blinds us from heaven; enough if, in

the other, there shine, even upon foul details, a spirit of
magnanimity. I would scarce send to the VICOMTE a reader who was

in quest of what we may call puritanmorality. The ventripotent
mulatto, the great cater, worker, earner and waster, the man of

much and witty laughter, the man of the great heart and alas! of
the doubtfulhonesty, is a figure not yet clearly set before the

world; he still awaits a sober and yet genialportrait; but with
whatever art that may be touched, and whateverindulgence, it will

not be the portrait of a precision. Dumas was certainly not
thinking of himself, but of Planchet, when he put into the mouth of

d'Artagnan's old servant this excellent profession: "MONSIEUR,
J'ETAIS UNE DE CES BONNES PATES D'HOMMES QUE DIEU A FAIT POUR

S'ANIMER PENDANT UN CERTAIN TEMPS ET POUR TROUVER BONNES TOUTES
CHOSES QUI ACCOMPAGNENT LEUR SEJOUR SUR LA TERRE." He was

thinking, as I say, of Planchet, to whom the words are aptly
fitted; but they were fitted also to Planchet's creator; and

perhaps this struck him as he wrote, for observe what follows:
"D'ARTAGNAN S'ASSIT ALORS PRES DE LA FENETRE, ET, CETTE PHILOSOPHIE

DE PLANCHET LUI AYANT PARU SOLIDE, IL Y REVA." In a man who finds
all things good, you will scarce expect much zeal for negative

virtues: the active alone will have a charm for him; abstinence,
however wise, however kind, will always seem to such a judge

entirely mean and partlyimpious. So with Dumas. Chastity is not
near his heart; nor yet, to his own sore cost, that virtue of

frugality which is the armour of the artist. Now, in the VICOMTE,
he had much to do with the contest of Fouquet and Colbert.

Historic justice should be all upon the side of Colbert, of
official honesty, and fiscal competence.

And Dumas knew it well: three times at least he shows his
knowledge; once it is but flashed upon us and received with the

laughter of Fouquet himself, in the jesting controversy in the
gardens of Saint Mande; once it is touched on by Aramis in the

forest of Senart; in the end, it is set before us clearly in one
dignified speech of the triumphant" target="_blank" title="a.胜利的；洋洋得意的">triumphant Colbert. But in Fouquet, the

waster, the lover of good cheer and wit and art, the swift
transactor of much business, "L'HOMME DE BRUIT, L'HOMME DE PLAISIR,

L'HOMME QUI N'EST QUE PARCEQUE LES AUTRES SONT," Dumas saw
something of himself and drew the figure the more tenderly. It is

to me even touching to see how he insists on Fouquet's honour; not
seeing, you might think, that unflawed honour is impossible to

spendthrifts; but rather, perhaps, in the light of his own life,
seeing it too well, and clinging the more to what was left. Honour

can survive a wound; it can live and thrive without a member. The
man rebounds from his disgrace; he begins fresh foundations on the

ruins of the old; and when his sword is broken, he will do
valiantly with his dagger. So it is with Fouquet in the book; so

it was with Dumas on the battlefield of life.
To cling to what is left of any damaged quality is virtue in the

man; but perhaps to sing its praises is scarcely to be called
morality in the writer. And it is elsewhere, it is in the

character of d'Artagnan, that we must look for that spirit of
morality, which is one of the chief merits of the book, makes one

of the main joys of its perusal, and sets it high above more
popular rivals. Athos, with the coming of years, has declined too

much into the preacher, and the preacher of a sapless creed; but
d'Artagnan has mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind and

upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the
copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his

fine, natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no
district visitor - no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void

of all refinement whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings
true like a good sovereign. Readers who have approached the

VICOMTE, not across country, but by the legitimate, five-volumed
avenue of the MOUSQUETAIRES and VINGT ANS APRES, will not have

forgotten d'Artagnan's ungentlemanly and perfectlyimprobable trick
upon Milady. What a pleasure it is, then, what a reward, and how

agreeable a lesson, to see the old captain humble himself to the
son of the man whom he had personated! Here, and throughout, if I

am to choose virtues for myself or my friends, let me choose the
virtues of d'Artagnan. I do not say there is no character as well

drawn in Shakespeare; I do say there is none that I love so wholly.
There are many spiritual eyes that seem to spy upon our actions -

eyes of the dead and the absent, whom we imagine to behold us in
our most private hours, and whom we fear and scruple to offend: our

witnesses and judges. And among these, even if you should think me
childish, I must count my d'Artagnan - not d'Artagnan of the

memoirs whom Thackeray pretended to prefer - a preference, I take
the freedom of saying, in which he stands alone; not the d'Artagnan