Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/134

 the "aristocrat " who travelled Europe, following in the track of Byron, during the first half of the last century; but certainly he is a gentleman, and could never have been drawn by a hater of our people.

It may further be pointed out, that Dumas received his inspiration as a dramatist from Shakespeare, and as a romancer, from Scott, both of whom he fully and gratefully admired. "Whenever he met an Englishman," says Vandam, "he considered it his particular duty to make himself agreeable to him as part of the debt he owed to Shakespeare and Walter Scott." If Dumas has made fun—may think legitimate fun—of some of our English characteristics and customs, he has at least known how to admire our beautiful women. The sight of a bevy of fair girls in Rotten Row, he tells us, caused him to realise in a flash that native quality in the heroines of Shakespeare, which until that moment he had never quite understood.

Some of the remarks in his chapters on England are worth quoting here. "The English, the least artistic and most industrial (I say 'industrial,' not 'industrious') of peoples, have almost achieved art by force of industry." ... "In Hyde Park you find the finest horses and the prettiest women in London, and therefore in the whole world. But to do the English men justice, their first glance is for the horse, and, one might almost add, their first