Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/367

 writers, and the books which they devised for our delight.

It is acknowledged that Dumas is one of the amusers of the world, even by his detractors, who appear to think that to amuse is easy work, requiring neither skill nor effort, deserving neither recognition nor praise. (If the amuser is born, not made, the rarity of the species is perhaps accounted for.) Is this power so small a thing? "They say that Dumas has amused three or four generations," said Jules Claretie; "he has done better; he has consoled them. If he has shown us humanity more generous than it is, do not reproach him for that: he has painted it in his own image." "Old folk blessed him," wrote Jules Janin, "for he made easy the path to the grave; the women called upon him to aid them against their sadness, and the young men swore by the romances of their poet." "All our hospital patients recover or die with one of your father's books under their pillow," said a surgeon to Alexandre Dumas fils. "When we wish to make them forget the terror of an approaching operation, the tediousness of convalescence, or the dread of death, we prescribe one of your father's novels, and they are able to forget."

One great poet and great sufferer has left his appreciative gratitude on record: