Virgi

gest that the first meeting between the great actor and the great dramatist is not to be passed over as an every-day occurrence :

our wine, our bread, and our salt with the two | Lenven explained the object of our call. Talma partridges, and we give the quail to the waiter. took up a kind of ancient stylus, at the end of We have nothing then to provide for but your which was a pen, and signed us an entrance horse, which may be well done for three francs ticket for two.' a day." "But we have only one gun!"-" It is all we want; one of us will shoot, the other What follows is characteristic. will follow on horseback. In this manner, it lium tantum vidi; and our autobiographer being sixteen leagues to Paris, we shall have cannot trust his readers to complete the naonly eight leagues each." "And the game-tural train of association, but must fain sugkeepers?"-"Ah, a precious obstacle! The one of us who is on horseback descries them at a distance; he gives due warning to the one who is shooting. The horseman dismounts, the sportsman mounts and gallops off the beat. As for the dismounted horseman, the keeper 'He held out his hand to me. I longed to overtakes him, and finds him strolling along kiss it. With my dramatic notions, Talma with his hands in his pockets." What are was a god for me; an unknown god, it is true you doing here?'-'I! you see what I am doing.'-unknown as Jupiter was to Sémelé-but a Never mind, let us hear.'-'I am taking a walk.' 'Just now you were on horseback.''Well, is it contrary to law to take a walk after a ride?' 'No, but you were not alone.'-'That may be.' 'Your companion was shooting.' 'You don't say so.' He is down there on horseback with his gun.'-'If so, run after him and try to catch him.' 'But I can't run after him and try to catch him, since he is on horseback and I am on foot.'-'In this case, my friend, your better course would be to go to the first village and drink our health.' "Whereupon we-you or I-give him a franc, which is set down to our account of profit and loss; the keeper makes his bow, and we continue our journey." "Well, well," exclaimed Paillot, "that is not badly imagined. I had heard that you had tried your hand at play writing." "It is precisely to see Leuven on the subject of my attempts in this line that I wish to go to Paris. Well, once at Paris—

"Talma was very shortsighted. I do not know whether he saw me or not. He was

washing his chest. His beard was nearly all shaved, which particularly struck me, insomuch as I had heard a dozen times that in Hamlet at the appearance of the father's ghost, Talma's hair was seen to stand on end. It must be owned that the aspect of Talma under these circumstances was far from poetical. However, when he stood upright, when, with the upper part of the body uncoverd and the lower part enveloped in a kind of large mantle of white cloth, he took one of the ends of this mantle and drew it on his shoulder, so as to half-veil the breast; there was something imperial in the movement that made me tremble.

god who appeared to me in the morning, and was to reveal himself to me at eve. Our hands touched. Oh, Talma, if you had then twenty years less, or I twenty years more! Alike honour was for me, Talma. I knew the past; you could not divine the future. If you had been told, Talma, that the hand you had just clasped would write sixty or eighty dramas, in each of which you, who were looking out for parts all your life, would have found a part that you would have converted into a marvel, you would hardly have parted so easily with the poor young man who coloured up to the eyes at having seen you, and was proud of having touched your hand. But how could you have seen this in me, Talma, since I did not see it in myself?'

An odd ebullition of the same sort once exposed him to a clever rebuke, attributed to Madame Dejazet. Arriving together on a theatrical expedition at Rouen, they were requested by the police to state their respective professions. Moi,' said Dumas, si je n'étais pas dans la ville ou fut né le grand Corneille, je me nommerais auteur dramatique. Et moi,' said Dejazet, si je n'étais pas dans la ville ou fut brulée Jeanne d'Arc, je me nommerais Pucelle.' His son, the author of La Dame aux Camelias,' in reference to his complexion and his vanity, said of him: My father is capable of getting up behind his own carriage to make people believe that he has a man of colour for footman.' Dumas begins one of his chapters thus:-'I know not who-perhaps myself-has said that the Revolution of 1830 was the last shot of Waterloo. It is a great truth.' Yet the graceful and truthful apology which Lord Russell has made for Moore's vanity may be made with equal justice for that of Dumas. It is a frank, joyous, and cordial vanity, without the slightest tincture of envy; and, far from seeking to depreciate his distinguished contemporaries, his proudest boast is that he has fairly earned a right to be named along with them :

At the epoch of my arrival in Paris (1822), this fashion, and the egotism may be parthe men who held a rank in literature, the il-doned for the sake of the frankness and lustrious, amongst whom I came to claim a generosity of the burst. Neither, looking at place, were Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, the peculiar character of the writer, do we Arnault, Etienne, Baour-Lormain, Béranger, C. Nodier, Viennet, Scribe, Théaulon, Soumet, Casimer Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Desangiers, and Alfred de Vigny. Let it be well understood that, by the order I assign them, I am only naming, not classifying them. Then came the half-literary half-political, as Cousin, Salvandy, Villemain, Thiers, Augustine Thierry, Michelet, Mignet, Vitet, Cave, Merimée, and Guizot. Lastly, those, who not being yet known, were to produce themselves by degrees, such as Balzac, Soulié, de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Barbier, Alphonse Karr, Theophile Gautier. The women in vogue, all three poets, were Mesdames Desbordes-Valmore, Amable Tastu, and Delphine Gay. Madame Sand, still unknown, was to be first revealed by "Indiana," in 1828 or 1829. I believe I have

fame.

We left him exulting in the hope of seeing Talma act, and for once the reality did not fall short of the expectation. The play was 'Sylla,' one great attraction of which consisted in the analogy in the hero's fortunes, as depicted by the author of the piece, to those of Napoleon I. After the performance, Dumas was taken to see Talma in his dressing-room, which he found crowded with notabilities:

morency and M. de Balzac, and everybody | fer of his household gods to the capital. will look first at M. de Balzac.' Under simi- The want of money was the grand difficulty. lar circumstances all eyes would have been He owed 150 francs to his tailor, and all lis turned towards Alexandre Dumas; and when available assets consisted of a dog named we reflect that what the majority of the world Pyramus, famous for voracity. This is not are striving for is to be distinguished amongst the precise quality which commends or adds their fellows-quod monstrer digito prætere- value to an animal of the canine species, yet untium-there is little room for surprise that it proved the salvation of Dumas. His dog he should have found ample compensation had left him to follow a butcher loaded with for all his labours and all his trials in his half a sheep, and he was in the very act of vainly endeavouring to parry the demands of the tailor, when he was informed that an Englishman requested the honour of his company at a neighbouring inn. On repairing thither, he finds a man, 'from forty to forty-five years of age, of a reddish fair complexion, with hair like a brush, and whiskers shaped like a collar, dressed in a blue coat with metal buttons, a shamois waistcoat, and grey kerseymere breeches, with gaiters to match, such as are worn by grooms. He was seated before a table on which he had just been dining, and which exhibited the remains of a dinner for six. He might weigh from three hundred to three hundred and sixty pounds.' Seated near him, with a depressed look, was Pyramus; and around Pyramus lay ten or a dozen plates, cleaned with that neatness which characterized him with respect to dirty plates. On one, however, lay some unfinished morsels. It was evidently these that caused the depression of Pyramus. Venez parler à mod, Monsieur,' said the Englishman, 'Le Dog a vos, il plait à mod." From a dialogue thus commenced and carried on in the same dialect by the stranger, we learn that the dog's power of eating had won his heart, 'Je aimé,mod,' he exclaims, les animals et les gens qui mangé beaucoup; c'est qu'il ont un bon estomac, et le bon estomac il faisé le bon humour.'

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'Talma caught sight of me near the door. "Ah, ah," he said, come forward." I advanced two steps nearer. "Well, Mr. Poet," he continued, are you satisfied?"-" Better than that, I am lost in wonder." "Well, you must come and see me again, and ask me for more tickets.”—“Alas, I leave Paris to-morrow, or the day after at latest." "That's unlucky, you would have seen me in Regulus. You know that I have made them fix Regulus for the day after to-morrow, Lucien (Arnault, the author) ?”—“Yes, I thank you," said Lucien. "What, you cannot stay till the day after tomorrow?"-" Impossible, I must return to the country." "What is your employment in the country?"-"I dare not tell you. I am clerk to a notary." Bah," said Talma, "you must not despair on that account. Corneille was clerk to a procureur. Gentlemen, I present a future Corneille." I coloured to the eyes. "Touch my forehead," I said, "it will bring me luck." Talma placed his hand upon my head. "Come, then," said he, "so be it. AIexandre Dumas, I baptise thee poet in the name of Shakespeare, Corneille, and Schiller! Return to the country; resume your place in your office, and if thou hast verily the vocation, the angel of poetry will take care to find thee wherever thou art, to carry thee off by the hair of thy head like the prophet Habbakuk, and to carry thee where thou hast work to do." I seized his hand, which I tried to carry to my lips. "Allons, allons," he exclaimed, "this lad has enthusiasm; we shall make something of him," and he shook me cordially by the hand.'

So ended this memorable interview, and Dumas returns to his province and his desk in a very bad mood for copying deeds or serving processes. His master probably saw that the embryo poet was likely to make a bad clerk; for Dumas immediately received warning that his future services would not be needed, and he forthwith set about the requisite preparations for the definitive trans

Our sagacious compatriot, it will be observed, differed slightly from Lord Byron, who envies and commends the gifted mortals who have a bad heart and a good stomach, who feel little and digest well. But so much the better for Dumas, who, after a hard internal struggle with his conscience which is hushed by an opportune reminiscence of the dun, agrees to part with his four-footed friend for the moderate sum of five napoleons, only a third of the price which the fat Englishman was anxious to force upon him.

This anecdote is an apt illustration of the manner in which Dumas and other popular French authors perseveringly foster the prejudices of their countrymen. The fat and fair Englishman, with his broken French and ridiculous eccentricity, still keeps his place in their light literature and on their stage; although nearly half a century has elapsed

the General's most influential constituents. His reception was favourable, and the following colloquy takes place :—

since we, on this side of the channel, ceased to believe in brown and lean marquisses living on frogs and soup maigre, taking enormous quantities of snuff, wearing collars or shirt fronts for want of shirts, and gaining a "I must first know what you are good for." scanty livelihood as fiddlers or dancing-mas-"Oh, not much." "Of course you know a "You ters. A still longer period has elapsed since have at least some notions of algebra, of geolittle mathematics?"-"No, General." we tolerated, even in a Fielding or a Smol- metry, of physics?" He paused between each lett, the coarseness of expression which has word, and at each word, I felt myself colourlittle, if at all, lessened the popularity or im- ing more and more. It was the first time that peded the circulation of Paul de Kock,' al- I was placed face to face with my ignorance.though the more fastidious portion of the "No, General," I replied, stammering, “I know Parisian public may disdainfully set down none of these." "You have gone through your his works as la lecture des grisettes. These law course, at all events?"-"No, General." very Memoirs are occasionally defaced by little; Greek, not a word." "Do you speak "You know Latin and Greek?"-" Latin, a expressions and allusions for which it would any living language ?"-" Italian." "Do you be difficult to find a parallel in any respecta- understand accounts ?"-"Not at all." I was ble English publication of later date than in torture, and he suffered visibly on my ac the editions of Pope containing the Poison- count. . . . "And yet," he resumed, "I am ing and the Circumcision of Edmund Curll. unwilling to abandon you."-"No, General, Relieved from difficulty by his dog, like for you would not abandon me only. I am a Whittington by his cat, our hero is preparing dunce, an idler, it is true; but my mother, to start for Paris. The five napoleons hav- to find a place, my mother ought not to be who reckons upon me, whom I have promised ing been reduced one-half by a payment on punished for my ignorance and my idleness." account to the tailor, he hits upon an inge-Give me your address," said the General, “I nious expedient for defraying the expenses of his journey. He plays billiards with the bookkeeper of the diligence for a petit verre d'absinthe a game, and leaves off the winner of 600 glasses, which, at three sous each, make a total gain of ninety francs, enough to pay for twelve places to Paris. He satis fies himself with one, arrives on the scene of his future glory with his fifty francs untouched, and proceeds to look round for a protector amongst the old friends of his father on the strength of his name. He is coldly received by Marshal Gourdain, and narrates as follows the result of his visit to Marshal (then General) Sebastiani :

'The General was in his cabinet: at the four

corners of this cabinet were four secretaries, as

at the four corners of our almanack are the

four points of the compass or the four winds. These four secretaries were writing to his dictation. It was three less than Cæsar, but two more than Napoleon. Each of these secretaries had on his desk-besides his pen, his paper, and his penknife-a gold snuff-box which he presented open to the General, each time that the latter stopped before him. The General delicately introduced the forefinger and thumb of a hand that his half-cousin Napoleon would have envied for its whiteness, voluptuously inhaled the scent, and then resumed his walk. My visit was short. Whatever my consideration for the General, I felt little disposed to

become a snuff-box bearer.'

He is coolly bowed out by another military friend of his father, and calls, as a last resource, on General Foy, to whom he has fortunately the additional recommendation of being the friend and protégé of one of

will consider what can be made of you. There,
at this desk." He offered me the pen with
which he had been writing. I took it, I looked
at it, wet as it still was; then shaking my head
"I will not write with your pen; it would be a
I returned it to him.-"No, General," I said,
profanation." He smiled. "What a child you
are," he continued. "Here then is a new one.
I began to write, with the General looking on.
Hardly had I written my name than he clapped
his hands. "We are saved," he exclaimed,
"You write a good hand." My head dropped
upon my breast-I had no longer strength to
ting, this was the sum total of my qualifica-
bear up against my shame. A good handwri-
tions. This brevet of incapacity, oh! it was
mine beyond dispute.'

been possessed by a large majority of the
This brevet of incapacity, however, has
most illustrious men of all ages, and it is
only within the century that persons of
superior education have deemed themselves
licensed to indulge in an inconvenient and
selfish degree of negligence in this respect.
It will appear from any good collection of
autographs that, if our ancestors were defi-
cient in orthography, they were proficients
in calligraphy, and that they became com-
paratively careless as to their penmanship
about the time when they began to pay strict
attention to their spelling. In particular,
they invariably made a point of signing their
names clearly and distinctly, in marked con-
trast to the modern fashion, which often
renders it impossible to do more than guess
at the identity of a correspondent.
In the
round-robin addressed to Dr. Johnson on
the subject of Goldsmith's epitaph (a fac-

formed a compound metal, which was called Corinthian brass. Well, he who shall effect, by his genius, for comedy, tragedy, and the drama, that which, unconsciously, in his ignorsilver, and bronze, he who shall melt by the ance, in his barbarism, Mummius did for gold, fire of inspiration, and melt in a single mould, Escbylus, Shakspeare, and Molière,―he, my friend, will have discovered a brass as precious as the brass of Corinth."

simile of which is given by Boswell), the names of the most distinguished malcontents -Gibbon, Burke, Sheridan, Colman, Joseph Warton, Reynolds, &c.—although affixed at the dinner-table, bear no marks of haste or slovenliness; and amongst the French authors of the eighteenth century, the two most remarkable for the excellence of their handwriting were Voltaire and Rousseau. The press of public business may be alleged as 'I reflected a moment on what Lapagne had some excuse for statesmen; whilst the hurry said. "What you tell me," I replied, "is very and flutter of composition may account for fine; and as it is fine it ought to be true. "Are you acquainted with Eschylus ?"—"No." the bad writing of poets and authors of the "Shakspeare?"-"No." "Molière?"—" Hardimaginative class. When Napoleon first atly." "Well then, read all that these three tained power, his signature was of the ortho- have written; when you have read them, read dox length and character; it gradually sank them a second time; when you have read them to the first three letters (Nap.); and later in a second time, learn them by heart-and then his career it consisted of a dash or scrawl-oh, then, you will pass from them to those intended for an N. Byron latterly wrote a who proceed from them-from Eschylus to Sophocles, from Sophocles to Euripides, from Eusad scrawl. Yet against these great names ripides to Seneca, from Seneca to Racine, from may be placed Washington, Wellington, Racine to Voltaire, and from Voltaire to ChePitt, Fox, Canning, Peel, Moore, Rogers, nier. So much for tragedy. Thus, you will Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and a host of be present at this transformation of a race of famous contemporaries, whose example, we eagles ending in parrots." hope, will save both young France' and 'young England' from the mischievous error of ever again regarding an eminently useful and becoming accomplishment as a 'brevet of incapacity.'

On the strength of his handwriting, Dumas is received into the establishment of the Duke of Orleans (afterwards King of the French) as a clerk at sixty pounds a year, and is singularly fortunate in finding amongst his companions of the desks one duly qualified to give him some excellent advice as to his literary projects. We shall quote the best of it, the rather that we suspect Dumas of having placed the results of his own studies and experience in the mouth of his friend :

pas

"Whom then ought one to imitate in comedy, tragedy, the drama ?" "In the first place, you ought not to imitate at all: you must study. He who follows a guide must necessarily walk behind. Do you wish to walk behind?"-"No." "Then study. Write neither comedy, nor tragedy, nor drama; take the sions, the events, the characters; melt them altogether in the mould of your imagination, and make statues of Corinthian brass." "What is Corinthian brass ?" "You do not know ?"“I know nothing." "You are lucky." "In what respect?" "Because you will learn all by yourself; because you will undergo no levelling process but that of your own intelligence, no rule but that of your own capacity for instruction. Corinthian brass? You must have heard that once upon a time Mummius burned Corinth. If so, you may have read that from the heat of the conflagration, gold, silver,

and brass had been melted and ran in streams through the streets. Now, the mixture of these three metals, the most precious of all,

"And to whom shall I pass from Shakspeare ?"-" From Shakspeare to Schiller ?”And from Schiller ?"" To nobody.""But Ducis ?"-Oh, don't let us confound Schiller with Ducis: Schiller draws inspiration, Ducis imitates; Schiller remains original: Ducis becomes a copyist, and a bad copyist.”

"Now for Molière ?"-" As to Molière, if you wish to study something worth the troufrom Molière to Terence, from Terence to Plauble, instead of descending, you will ascend tus, from Plautus to Aristophanes."

"But Corneille, you have forgotten him, I fancy?—I do not forget him, I place him by himself, because he is neither an ancient Greek, nor an old Roman. He is a Cordovan, like Lucan; you will see, when you compare them, that his verse has a great resemblance to that

of the "Pharsalia."

66

"And in romance, what is to be done ?"Everything as with the theatre." "I believed, however, that we had excellent romances." "What have you read in this line?"—" Those of Lesage, of Madame Cottin, and of Pigault"What was their effect on you?" Lebrun." "Those of Lesage amused me, those of Madame Cottin made me shed tears, those of "Then you Pigault-Lebrun made me laugh." have read neither Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cooper? Read them."

"And when I have read them, what am I to make of them ?"—Corinthian brass, as before; only you must endeavour to add a trifling ingredient which is to be found in neither one of them-passion. Goethe will give you poetry, Walter Scott the study of character, Cooper the mysterious grandeur of the prairie, the forest, and the ocean; but as for passion, you will seek for it in vain in any of them."'

As an indispensable preparation for the historical romance, he is told to read Join