Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/368

 "For six years," wrote Heine to his confrère, "I have been bed-ridden. During the worst part of the time, when I was suffering the greatest torment, my wife read your romances to me, and that was the only way in which I was enabled to forget my pains. Thus I have devoured them all, and sometimes during the reading I have exclaimed 'What an ingenious poet! What a grand fellow this Dumas is!' Certainly after Cervantes and Madame Schariaz, better known as the sultana Scheherazade, you are the most amusing storyteller I know. What fluency! what ease! and what a good chap you are! Truly, I can find but one fault in you: that is modesty. You are too modest. Good gracious! those who accuse you of boasting and swaggering have no notion of the greatness of your talent!"

Nor are these "amusing" books ephemeral in their charm; there is, despite of critics, something more than merely an hour's entertainment in Dumas's romances. Their particular qualities have been thus defined by Dr Garnett:

"Dumas stands out as the first among the truly eminent novelists of the world for exuberance of production. To class him thus is to assign him a high place.... Exuberance implies a vast fertility of invention; animated, impassioned style; and more particularly great facility in dialogue