Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/334

 the past, has distorted or ignored history. In support of this indictment the critics have quoted the passages in "Vingt Ans Après" relating to our Civil War and the execution of Charles—together with the "General Monk" episode, in "Bragelonne," and the plot of the plays "Catherine Howard" and "Kean." As he has expressed it in a well-known sentence, Dumas deliberately violated history, when he had some set purpose to achieve which rendered it necessary. The word "fiction" implies something, even in historical romance, and the writer who has not the nerve to make a little history for his own purposes, and to take liberties with great personages, may contrive very accurate history, but we are afraid he will write a very dull romance. On the other hand, when Dumas set himself to reproduce a certain period in the past centuries, he was full of precise detail and historic fact. And he was supreme in what, after all, was the essential: he caught and revivified the atmosphere of those by-gone days with a fidelity, a power of conviction, a charm, and a subtle skill which no one before or since has excelled.

The warfare between the classicists and romantics in French literature was waged fiercely throughout Dumas's prime. Nisard, of whom we have spoken, fastened on Dumas the stigma of "easy composition." To this our author replied with his