Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/337

 of working, doing justice to his friend's marvellous memory, and that power of intuition and divination which was almost second-sight.

"When other authors write," he says, "they are stopped every other minute—there is a detail to discover, or a reference to verify—a lapse of memory, or some other obstacle. Dumas was never stopped by anything. The practice of writing for the stage gave him great fluency in composition; add to these gifts sparkling wit, and inexhaustible gaiety, and you will understand how, with such resources, a man may achieve an incredible rapidity of production without sacrificing skill in construction or injuring the quality or solidity of his work."

The same writer adds shrewdly "the public were very ready to despise as 'shop-made goods' books written in such quantity, being unwilling to believe that there are certain favoured individualities like those blest places of the earth where the grain shoots into green and ripens in a few weeks. It is no sin to own these precious gifts: it is only wrong to abuse them."

It is difficult for most people to comprehend that a book quickly written can be well written; and the obvious course of trying the work on its merits does not seem to occur to them. As the old prejudices of fifty years ago are still held to-day, we shall do well to quote Maxime Du Camp's protest on behalf