The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-01-31
Dumas, Bismarck, Mozart.

| Lucy I'll. Hooper in Appletons Journal gos-
| sips as follows:
| Here is a just and vivid picture of the genius
OF the elder Dumas: "That extraordinary
talent, that tropical genius, powerful, abun-
dant, ardent, mobile and entirely physical, did
not need to create work. 1t warmed into
ife whatever it encountered. A Protestant
refugee at Rotterdam had published in that
city, abont the year 100, three wIetched little
volumes of tolerably happy invention, but
diffuse and vulgar in style. Dumas made of
them the entertaining history of the 'Trois
Mousquetaires.' You might bring him his
tory OF any kind, subject well or i'll treated,
the astonishing artist would cast the paste into
| his oven, whence in few minutes it would
come forth well cooked and sayory. 1 think
that be bas signed thousand works. dramas
and novels. he has been accu ed with having
stolen the half OF them. That is not true.
The oven belonged to him. No matter from
what quarter came the paste. so long as he had
not kneaded, retouched and watched over it, it
had no value. He corrected tie mould, re-
combined the elements and superintended the
baking One of his comedies, the 'Demoiselles
de st. Cyr which achieved more than hun
dred representations, was, when it fell into his
hands, nothing more than little Uniformed
vaudeville, which its author sold for 80 francs
.1SS
and an engineer"
Here is a sketch of Bismarck: s'This redoubt-
aole contemporary, who has already his coat
of-arms. and whose father was the guardian of
state fortress. the Prince Won Bismarck, is a
human enigma, who has in his service the
strangest of faculties. History can alone solve
this riddle. He might replace his armorial
bearings by silver sphinx on a feld-gules 1t
the Baltic. But quality which cannot be de-
nied 10 hlm Is power of penetration, which
was aided by bis journeys and his youthful OBJ
servations, which was sharpened by his soiourn
IN france, and which is marvelously aided
by his natural bodness and his brusquerie, as
sumed or real, and which permit him to man
age, will not say to deceive, mankind. When
be busted himself with over-throwing the
scatfolding of the ancient little feudal princi-
palities of Germany he was thought to be a
Democrat, and all Democrats hastened 10 fol-
low in his train. When, afterwards, he Brought
up the old grievances of the Prussian monarchy
against US, and raised up the trivial Spanish
quarrel of the Hohenzoerns, so insanely ac-
cepted by the representatives and masters of
France, the Prussian feudalists. then taking
him for the most monarchical of royalists and
the most feuda of feudalists, fought at his side
as one man. This enigmatical series of prob
lens is not yet ended"
This criticism of Mozart by Italian apprecia-
ton sixty years ago is curious, and reminds
one OF the "Tannhauser" hissed from the Paris
ian stage some few years past:
IL may De remembered that Mozart in Mt
Ian in 1916 was looked upon as barbarous
composer, whose troppo robusta music, as the
Italian critic Barettl phrased it, might possibly
please, not the nightingales that sing, but the
asses that Bray"
An unfortunate clock-maker of the Quarter
Latin named Marambot, having shot the Sc
ducer of his daughter, Alexandre Dumas comes
out with long article as a pendant to his
"ruea!" wherein he no longer cries, skill
her!' but, more sensibly, 'Kill hinar' The Pc
culiar and cold-blooded indelicacy of style of
the great author, when he plies his pen in be.
half of these social problems, prevents me from
giving any extracts. L was struck, however,
with one passage, wherein he advocates
change from the invariabe French practice of
bringing up young girls in ignorance and in
leading strings. Teach them the dangers that
environ them, and let them guard against
them themselves would be the advice of an
American. aud such substantially is that cf NJ.
Dumas She would know, it is true, what
young girl ought not to be told, but, on the
other hand, she would know what young girl
ought not to do" Come, then-if American
training is ADVOCATED in Paris by such an advo.
cate. there is hope for the futnre of Psrisian So
ceiy, after all.