Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/354

 further delay to face a comparison as inevitable in the case of Dumas the novelist, as was that with Hugo in the case of Dumas the playwright. The two names—in the field of romance—are linked together inseparably by talents, time, and circumstance; but until recent years the ordinary English critic would not admit of any degree of equality between the two. It is no doubt an act of daring on our part to presume to discuss the relative merits of the two men, as if the Frenchman could seriously challenge the Scotsman's supremacy. Yet we venture to submit that, generally speaking, the two writers, as masters of the historical romance, stand on a level, and that Sir Walter, superior as he is in some respects, has been excelled by his pupil in the art of story-telling.

In claiming this point for our client we own that we should have none of that client's sympathy. Scott, as we have said, was Dumas's teacher, and the junior never wearied of expressing his praise, his gratitude, and reverence for the older writer. "Scott," he wrote in his "Mémoires," "had a great influence on me in the early days of my literary life." In another book he analysed the causes of his master's success, thus: "To the natural qualities of his predecessors Scott added knowledge specially acquired; to his study of the hearts of men, he added that of the science of popular history;