Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/313

 an estimation of the great Frenchman which would say what should be said, with all the literary power and critical authority which that writer can command.

Unfortunately the other ordinary books of reference still repeat the old story of prejudice and spite. We have already mentioned that there is only one book in English dealing with Dumas's life and writings, a work which the critics have heartily condemned. We need only add, by way of summing up their views, that it ought fitly to be entitled "Dumas According to his Enemies: by One of Them." In France no adequate biography exists: on the one hand there are the "studies" of MM. B. de Bury and Parigot; on the other we have the bibliographical and biographical notes of Dumas's fellow-provincial, Glinel; but as yet the book which shall combine the two points of view is wanting.

The lover of Dumas could afford to laugh at the old-fashioned utterances of a cyclopædia in the sixties; he could forget a third-rate biography already forgotten by the public. But these are not the only obstacles in the way of a reconsideration of Dumas's literary merits. It is only a few years since a "Quarterly Reviewer" dismissed the claims of our author as a novelist in a few contemptuous words. True, nobody reads the Quarterly Review, but even straws show how the