Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/299

 course of the royal fugitive step by step, and Maxime Du Camp, who had himself studied the epoch carefully, testified to Dumas's accuracy and skill in the revision of the work of trusted historians. The "Terreur," in spite of its fiction-form, is practically a study of the Prusso-Austrian war, made on the spot, and full of shrewd observation and disquieting forebodings, soon to be justified. We should add here "Les Garibaldiens," Dumas's diary as amateur and volunteer war correspondent in 1860—a crisp, intelligent, restrained account of the Sicilian campaign.

Certainly not the least attractive of Dumas's writings are those in which he writes frankly of himself, his friends, his pets, and all that concerns his life and work. Of these, the first in order and importance is "Mes Mémoires," commenced in the forties, but written "in exile" in 1852-54, when leisure allowed the adventurous author to look back upon his early life. Dr Garnett speaks of them as "those wondrous 'Mémoires' which, as it is inconceivable that anyone but himself should have written them, alone suffice to establish his genius." The ten volumes cover the period of childhood, the early struggles and triumphs, the Revolution of 1830, and end abruptly at the time of the Swiss tour, 1832-33. But the "Mémoires" contain much more than Dumas's own history; he chronicles the political