The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-18 00:00:00

LI

FRAGMENTS DES OEUVRES D'eILEX-
ANDRE DUMAS. Choisis a l'usage de la Jeun.,sse
par Miss Mary Russell Milford.
There is a writer in France who has risen from
obscurity and indigence to affluence and celebrity,
who has travelled more, read more, written more,
seen more, and talked more than any twenty men of
the same age in the length and breadth of Christendom.
This remarkable man—as volatile in temperament as
he is copious in imagination and perpetual industry—
was born at Villers-Cotterets, in the department of
the Aisne, on the 24th July, 1803, so that he is
scarcely four months past the forty-fourth anniversary
of his nativity. Without patronage, and with scarcely
any systematic education, he has acquired for himself a
fame as wide if not as permanent as the literature of
his country. He set out from Villers-Cotterets
with just fifty-three francs in his pocket to seek his
fortune at Paris. Without any better introduction
than a simple letter from an elector of Aisne, he
waited upon General Foy to obtain his patronage.
As good luck would have it, he was received cour-
teously, and some such conversation as the following
ensued :
" Let us see ! what can we do for you ?"
" Everything you wish, General."
" It is necessary at first, however, that I should
know what you are good for !"
" 0 ! nothing wonderful."
" Let us see! what do you know ? a little mathe-
matics ?"
" No, General."
" You have at least some knowledge of geometry,
df physics ?"
" No, General."
" You have passed your examination ?"
" No, General."
" You know Latin and Greek ?"
" Very little."
" Perhaps you understand book-keeping ?"
" Not the least in the world."
The patron was puzzled, and the client abashed,
for it was the first time he had recognised his
ignorance, " c'etait la premzere foil qu'on me mettait
ainsi face a face avec mon ignorance."
" Give me your address," said the General after a
while, " and I will think over what I can do for
you."

The young man took the pen and wrote his address,
his protector watching him while he did so. All at
once the latter clapped his hands, crying out—
" We are saved ! you write a beautiful hand!"
From this talent as a calligrapher the ad-
venturer was installed as a copying clerk in the
office of the Due d'Orleans, since Louis Phi-
lippe, at a salary of a hundred francs a month.
Since that appointment he has rendered himself
famous by the fruitfulness of his fancy, by the versa-
tility of his powers, and by the unconquerable indus-
try and enthusiasm of an intellect which has been
strengthened by the animal robustness of his consti-
tution. Within an interval of seventeen years helms
penned a whole library—dramas, stories, essays,
dissertations, romances, histories, biographies, travels,
lyrics, odes, and almost every species of poetic and
prose composition. He has proved himself the Vol-
taire of belles lettres, the Crichton of students, the
Deucalion of novelists. Books have poured from his
brain as the golden shower poured into the lap of Danai.
And yet, while his intellect has been thus prolific, no
man ever saw him at his studies. There is a fiction in
Paris that he has never been seen with a pen in his
hands. In pleasure excursions, in picnics, in balls, in
masquerades, shooting, riding, and boating, rattling
through the Peninsula in a post-chaise, scaling the
mountains of Switzerland, flying from Leeds to
Manchester in the train of a steam-engine, jour-
neying through the deserts of Africa on the hump of
a dromedary, in all kinds of places, in the most impro-
bable positions, he is the noisiest, merriest, and most
light- hearted. Need we say who this writer is ? Need
we say that it is Alexandre Dumas, the Marquis de
la Pailleterie, the Prince of Feuiltonists ? To form
an adequate estimate of the intellectual powers of an
author so prolific and voluminous, it is necessary that
one should be familiarised with his compositions. But
as this would be scarcely possible, from a dozen suffi-
cient reasons, to the readers in a foreign country, it
becomes essential to afford them some knowledge of
his writings, either by translations or by a judicious
selection of fragments from the originals. The latter
course we cannot but regard as preferable :
first, because of the spirit and the style
which are untranslateable ; and, secondly, because
his excellences may be therein the more readily
perceived and appreciated. These sentiments
seem to have originated the publication of the ele-
gant volume now placed before us for consideration.
The responsibility of selection, moreover, has been
consigned to a lady eminently fitted for such an un-
dertaking, by a taste in literature which has been
verified in her own productions, and confirmed by no
inconsiderable share of popularity. The mere appear-
ance of the name of Miss Mary Russell Mitford on
the title-page will be an authentication of the remark
uttered in the " Advertisement," that the specimens
contained in the book have been "so carefully
selected that it may be left with safety on the
drawing-room table, or placed with confidence in the
hands of youth." Although the varied character of
the fragments which constitute this compilation would
induce many to conjecture that Miss Mitford has
culled from most of the effusions of M. Dumas, it is
a remarkable proof of the brilliancy and fertility of
the works of the latter to know that they have been
principally transcribed from his Travels and Histo-
ries, as they are " more susceptible of an independent
interest," and " convey in the pleasantest manner
the most solid information." The volume is daintily
bound and emblazoned in imitation of enamel; the
contents are arranged with an eye both to perspicuity
and contrast ; and several of the chapters are illustrated
with coloured engravings. Among the more excel-
lent papers in the collection we may particularise :
" The Pilgrimage to Mount St. Bernard ;" prefaced
with that comical adventure of Alexandre Dumas
in Search of a Mattrass ; " The Cabinet Portraits
Of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck,"
those two illustrious artists who, when dead, had a
chapel for a sepulchre, and a cathedral for a mausoleum,
" marts, its ant une chapelle pour sepulcre, et une ca-
thedrale pour mausolee ; and the exquisite sketch of
Chilon, where Bonnivard was confined in a dungeon,
in darkness, chained to a pillar, for six years, in ex-
piation of his patriotism, until one day a tumult
arose in the castle, and a hundred voices cried out
together :
" Bonnivard, tu es libre !"
" Et Geneve,"
" Libre aussi 1"
Who can ever forget, again, the narrative of Dumas'
visit to the Chateau d' Arenenberg to Hortense de
Beauharnois, ex- Queen of Holland ? Who can ever
forget who has once read it, the account of his agita-
tation, when he is walking to the castle, to see for the
first time, the queen of his imagination, pausing on
the gravel walk, dreading that his dream of the step-
daughter of Le Grand Napoleon may not be realised;
hoping that it may ? Who can ever forget the emo-
tion of Dumas, when he has seen her; when the ideal
has been exceeded; when she thrills him into admira-
tion by her look, her words, her gentle dignity? "Bien,
mon cceur ! " he exclaims, "cette fois, tune t' dais pas
trompe,Jenne hornme, c'est la reine de ton enfance graci.
euse et bonne ; pate, c est ce son de voix, c'est
ce regard gue tu as rive a la file de Josephine;
laisse battre librement ton cceur ; une fats la realite s'est
trouvee a la hauteur du souge, regarde, ecoute, sois
heureux." And when the ex• Queen shows him the
portrait, the magnifigue portrait of Napoleon on the
bridge of Lodi ; and when Dumas sits down before
it with his face buried in his two hands ; and when
he sees, in the imperial reliquary of Hortense, the
talisman of Charlemagne (a piece of the true cross
enclosed in an emerald, and suspended to a chain of
solid gold), which was given to Napoleon by the
citizens of Aix-la-Chapelle, and worn by him on the
days of Austerlitz and Wagram ; and when the ex-
Queen, seated at herpiano, sings to Dumas that plain-
tive air,

m:oguipoiteszed forpour the dead Empress,
marcher alag/oire,"
which she V°uhasd composed
and
had sung to the dead Emperor in a room in the Tui-
leries !—the picture, to our thinking is, perhaps the
most exquisite one ever painted by Alexandre Dumas.
It is historic and graceful—like a passage from Ta-
citus illustrated by Boccaccio. Then there is the
noble delineation suggested by a memorable annecdote
in the memoirs of the Duchessed'Abrantes—"Napoleon
et Lucien." When, after depicting a solitary man in
one of the superb halls of the palace of Milan, he
says—" At this time, this man rules over one hundred
and twenty millions of men, ten people chaunt in
their hearts the hosannahs of his glory in ten dif-
ferent , languages • for this man is more than Caesar,
is beyond even Charlemagne; it is Napoleon the
Great, the Jupiter Tonans of France." It were
hopeless, however, to attempt an enumeration of the
pieces contained in the volume withih the space we
can here allow ourselves. The book is a monument
to the genius of the Prince of Feuiltonists better than
brass or marble : it is crowded with passages emi-
nently worthy of perusal, and not unworthy of re-
membrance.

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