D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

li PREFACE. ally, and without pains, Iam dramatic. My stories are first composed as plays, the opening clear, the end short and all interesting. Action ejects, shapes and animates my conceptions. A statuary and not a painter, I embody sooner than I sketch, model rather than paint. Disciple of the Realistic School, Shakespeare’s, Sheridan’s or Schiller’s, my characters are in fast dyes, not evanescent tints; they do deeds and do not maunder over them, prosing, poetizing or philosophizing. Hence, any actor can slip into my casts—Melingue was my D’Artagnan, the body to my phantasm.” Well, Dumas was unjust; for the more he is reaad—nay, the more intimately he is studied, the more consummate and imposing he becomes as a prodigy; clearness of the alabaster lamp, whose body lets the rays diffuse; taste true, because yours and mine, a woman’s or a girl's, the idler’s or the toiler's; what verve and fluency! the purling spring becoming rivulet, river, delta, ocean! a mind that produces wholesome fruit, tart yet sweet enough, plenti- ful as the wild crab. As Raphael exclusively loved one model; as one fond head appears on all the marbles a sculptor carves, so D’Artagnan, cherished by his own literary father as by his own friends, reappears throughout the Dumas Gallery. In one he is chivalric, in another he may be modern; here, a play-actor; there, Coconnas marching gallantly to his doom; in peasant garb, our simple, honest Ange Pitou; in the age of plumes and starch, a beau; as ‘‘Yacoub,” Jealousy itself; as Dantes, the Avenger! but it is Dumas’ D’Artagnan, by a trait if not complete. Such a Proteus might well flag—but as Dumas was inde- fatigable, so is D’Artagnan revived on touching new ground. Such ground! The scene of ‘‘D’Artagnan, the King- CONNIE OOOKS (E(0) =)