mere scene-painting for a background and mere lay-figures for actors."
Professor Carpenter sees evidence of the "staying power" in these books, and does not hesitate to say so.
"I find one explanation of the deeper effect these volumes make on me," he writes, "in the fact that Dumas, recklessly as he apparently wrote, and in headlong haste, has somehow managed to build his characters out of genuinely human material. He seems to treat them like the veriest puppets; they wear their hearts on their sleeves; and yet neither the creations of Scott nor of Shakespeare are more truly alive. With women he was less successful; though Marguerite, the queen of folly, the gracious Diane de Monsoreau, and the proud Comtesse de Charny, are wonderful types of womanhood. But his men are men. D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; Chicot, Henri IV., La Mole, Coconnas, Bussy d'Amboise; Balsamo, Philippe de Tavernay, and Gilbert—not to mention others—these are as solidly and finely imagined as any characters in literature. How the author could have produced them we may never cease to wonder; but they do exist. He lived a foolishi life; and he wrote in haste; but he wrote from his heart, and his heart was by nature clairvoyant."
And he adds in conclusion:
