Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/224

 as well as a drama. "Acté," which was published in 1839, is not translated into English, but in some respects it is a most notable book. "Scott could never have written the first two hundred pages," says Parigot truly; "Renan would not have been ashamed of them. Every step that Dumas takes his foot rests on a document—Nero's entry into the city over the débris of its walls, which had been levelled in his honour, the suppers, the games at the circus, the letters from Gaul which interrupt the spectacle—the whole story taken from authentic sources, not forgetting Nero's flight, and his death at the house of Plancus. And with what grace, with what imaginative facility is this prodigious epoch conjured up, living and breathing, before our eyes! To these marvels of illusion, gathered together by the artist in Dumas with great effort and skill, he adds the vivid illusion of his own story."

It is a pity that such excellent work should in the end "drag itself to death in plagiarism and prolixity"; but the fact was that Dumas's mother died whilst the book was being written, and this probably accounts for the fact that the novel varies so markedly in merit. Either the writer, absorbed in his sorrow, left some other author to finish it, or he lost interest in the romance, and being as usual pressed for time, made use of Chateaubriand's "Martyrs" to supply the place of his vanished inspiration.