Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/348

 whole columns, carved capitals and all, so that the temple which they support be magnificent. Goëthe understood this very well, as did Shakespeare long before him."

Professor Brander Matthews in his consideration of our author as playwright cannot avoid the coupling of the two great names. "There is but one dramatist of Dumas's generation who will stand comparison with him," he says; "and even Victor Hugo, master as he is of many things, is less a master of the theatre than Dumas."

Dumas fils wrote of his father as one "who was and is the master of the modern stage, whose prodigious imagination touched the four cardinal points of our art,—tragedy, historic drama, the dramas of manners, and the comedy of anecdote,—whose only fault was to lack solemnity, and to have genius without pride, and fecundity without effort, as he had youth and health; and who (to conclude), Shakespeare being taken as the culminating point, by invention, power and variety, approached among us most closely to Shakespeare." And Professor Matthews adds, of the son's opinion: "Due allowance made, he is not so very far out."

"Dumas broke ground," writes Mr Henley, "with the ease, the assurance, the insight into essentials, and a technical accomplishment of a master, and he retained these qualities to the last.... He was the