the ci-devant Augustus Mackeat, collaborated. Yet who can deny that the work is the work of the Dumas of the Mémoires and of Mes Bêtes? It is the same hand, the same informing spirit, the same brilliant gaiety, the same honest ethics, the same dazzling fertility of resource. Maquet did something—there is no doubt on that head, the men constantly worked together.

But what did Maquet do? He may have made—he did make—"researches." Heaven knows that they were not very deep. Perhaps he discovered that Newcastle is on the Tweed, and that the Scottish army which—shall we say did not adhere to Charles I.?—largely consisted of Highlanders. Perhaps he suggested that Charles I. might want to hear a Mass on the eve of his execution. Perhaps he depicted jolly Charles II. as un beau ténébreux, in the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I think that there I find the hand of Maquet. Whatever he did, Maquet did something. I suggest that he made these remarkable researches, that he listened while Dumas talked, that he "made objections" (as the père invited the fils to do), that sometimes he "blocked out" a chapter, which Dumas took, and made into a new thing, or left standing, like that deplorable Charles II. at Blois. On the whole, I conceive that (as regards the great novels) Maquet satisfied Dumas's need of companionship, that he was to the man of genius what Harry Killigrew was to the actual Charles II.

Before the law, in 1856 and in 1858, M. Maquet claimed[Pg xxviii] his right to be declared fellow-author of eighteen novels, all the best of them. It was recognised by the law that he had lent a hand, but he took no more than that by his legal adventures. M. Glinel publishes two of his letters to his counsel: "It is not justice which has won the day, but Dumas," exclaims Augustus. He also complains that he is threatened with a new law-suit "avec l'éternel coquin qu'on appelle Dumas." Time kills many animosities. According to M. About, M. Maquet lived to speak kindly of Dumas, as did his legion of other collaborators. "The proudest congratulate themselves on having been trained in so good a school; and M. Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real reverence and affection of his great friend." Monsieur Henri Blaze de Bury describes Dumas's method thus:—

"The plot was considered by Dumas and his assistant. The collaborator wrote the book and brought it to the master, who worked over the draft, and re-wrote it all. From one volume, often ill-constructed, he would evolve three volumes or four. Le Chevalier d'Harmental by Maquet at first was a tale of sixty pages. Often and often Dumas was the unnamed collaborator of others." M. Blaze de Bury has seen a score of pieces, signed by other names, of which Dumas in each case wrote two-thirds. M. About confirms M. Blaze de Bury's account. He has known Dumas give the ideas to his collaborator. That gentleman then handed in a sketch, written on small leaves of paper. Dumas copied each leaf out on large paper, expanding, altering, improving, en y semant l'esprit à pleines mains.

By this method of collaboration Dumas really did the work himself. He supplied the ideas and the esprit, and gave the collaborator a lesson in the art of fiction, much as a tutor teaches composition in Greek or Latin. In other examples, such as Le Chevalier d'Harmental, the idea, we know, came from Maquet, who had written a conte on the subject. Nobody wanted the conte, and Dumas made it into the novel, whereby Maquet also benefited. In England collaboration in novel-writing is unusual. In the case of Mr. Rice and Sir Walter Besant we have Sir Walter's description of "how it was done," and it appears that he did most of it. In another case familiar to me, A, an unpopular author, found in his researches a good and dramatic historical subject. On this he wrote a tale of seven chapters, and placed that tale in a drawer, where it lay for years. He then showed it to B, who made a play out of it. The play was nibbled at, but not accepted. B then took the subject, and, going behind the original story, worked up to the point at which it began, whence B and A continued it, and now the thing was a novel, which did not rival in popularity the works of Dumas. Probably in each case of collaboration the methods differ. In one case each author wrote the whole of the book separately, and then the versions were blended.

These are legitimate practices, but in his later years Dumas became less conscientious. There is a story, we have seen, that Maquet once inserted sixteen ques in one sentence, and showed it to his friends. Dumas never looked at it, and the sentence with its sixteen ques duly appeared in the feuilleton of next day's newspaper, for in newspapers were the romances "serialised," as some literary journals say. I have never found that sentence in any of the novels, never met more than five ques in one sentence of Dumas's, or more than five "whiches" in one of Sir Walter Scott's. As his age and indolence increased, the nature of things revenged itself on the fame and fortunes of Dumas. The author of the later novels, as M. Henri Blaze de Bury says, is "Dumas-Légion."

The true collaborators of Dumas were human nature and history. Men are eternally interesting to men, but in historical writing, before Scott, the men (except the kings and other chief actors) were left much in the vague. They and their deeds and characters lay hidden in memoirs and unprinted letters. Such a man as the Cavalier, Edward Wogan, "a very beautiful person," says Clarendon, was briefly and inaccurately touched on by that noble author. More justice is done to him by his kinsman, the adventurous Sir Charles Wogan, in a letter to Swift. He did not escape Scott, who wrote a poem to his memory. Now, such a character as Wogan, brave, beautiful, resourceful as d'Artagnan, landing in England with the gallows before his eyes, and carrying a troop of cavalry through the hostile Cromwellian country, "wherever might lead him the shade of Montrose," to join the Clans and strike a blow for King Charles, was precisely the character for Dumas. Such men as Wogan, such women as Jane Lane and Lady Ogilvy, Dumas rediscovered, and they were his inspiration. The past was not really dull, though dull might be the books of academic historians. They omitted the human element, the life, the colour, and, we are told, "scientific history" ought to be thus impartially jejune. The great public turns away from scientific history to Dumas and to modern imitators, good and bad, and how inordinately bad some of his followers can be! An American critic half despairs of his country because some silly novels, pretending to be historical, are popular. The symptom is good rather than bad. Untrained and undirected, falling on the stupid and ignorant new novels most loudly trumpeted, the young Americans do emancipate themselves from the tyranny of to-day, and their own fancy lends a glamour to some inept romance of the past. They dwell with tragedy and with Mary Stuart, though she be the Mary Stuart of a dull, incompetent scribbler. They may hear of Scott and Dumas, and follow them.

Dumas has been blamed by moralists like Mr. Fitzgerald for depraving the morals of France! That he set an example of violence and frenzy, crime and licence on the stage, cannot easily be denied. But in the Musketeers he decidedly improves on the taste and morals of the France of 1630-1660, whether tested by d'Artagnan's Mémoires or by the more authentic works of Tallemant and de Retz. He is infinitely more delicate, he apologises for what he justly calls the "infamies" of certain proceedings of his heroes, and he puts heart and sentiment even into the light love of Milady's soubrette. If d'Artagnan "had no youth, no heart, only