Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/324

 creative completion of a thing, I believe that to be impossible."

After having quoted Shakespeare and Molière in support of his practice, Dumas adds:

"The man of genius does not steal, he conquers; he makes the province which he annexes a part of his own empire, peoples it with his own subjects, and imposes his own laws upon it. He extends his golden sceptre over it, and no one dares to say, as they look upon his fair kingdom, 'That piece of ground was not part of his patrimony.

One delightful sample of the knowledge and spirit with which Dumas was attacked by his detractors is recorded in the "Mémoires." "Isabel de Bavière" was, as we know, published serially in the first numbers of Revue des deux Mondes, which was at that time little known and read by few. Bourgeois and Lockroy joined some of the most striking scenes of the chronique together and made them into a play called "Perrinet Leclerc," which was very successful. At that time Dumas had collaborated with Bourgeois in a drama "Le Fils Emigré," which our author confesses to have been "execrable" play. One of the leading critics of the day reviled Dumas as if he were the sole author of the latter drama, but praised the other to the skies; and not content with this, the journalist emphasised his own fatuity by calling attention to an