The true collaborators of Dumas were human nature and history. Men are eternally interesting to men, but in historical writing, before Scott, the men (except the kings and other chief actors) were left much in the vague. They and their deeds and characters lay hidden in memoirs and unprinted letters. Such a man as the Cavalier, Edward Wogan, "a very beautiful person," says Clarendon, was briefly and inaccurately touched on by that noble author. More justice is done to him by his kinsman, the adventurous Sir Charles Wogan, in a letter to Swift. He did not escape Scott, who wrote a poem to his memory. Now, such a character as Wogan, brave, beautiful, resourceful as d'Artagnan, landing in England with the gallows before his eyes, and carrying a troop of cavalry through the hostile Cromwellian country, "wherever might lead him the shade of Montrose," to join the Clans and strike a blow for King Charles, was precisely the character for Dumas. Such men as Wogan, such women as Jane Lane and Lady Ogilvy, Dumas rediscovered, and they were his inspiration. The past was not really dull, though dull might be the books of academic historians. They omitted the human element, the life, the colour, and, we are told, "scientific history" ought to be thus impartially jejune. The great public turns away from scientific history to Dumas and to modern imitators, good and bad, and how inordinately bad some of his followers can be! An American critic half despairs of his country because some silly novels, pretending to be historical, are popular. The symptom is good rather than bad. Untrained and undirected, falling on the stupid and ignorant new novels most loudly trumpeted, the young Americans do emancipate themselves from the tyranny of to-day, and their own fancy lends a glamour to some inept romance of the past. They dwell with tragedy and with Mary Stuart, though she be the Mary Stuart of a dull, incompetent scribbler. They may hear of Scott and Dumas, and follow them. Dumas has been blamed by moralists like Mr. Fitzgerald for depraving the morals of France! That he set an example of violence and frenzy, crime and licence on the stage, cannot easily be denied. But in the _Musketeers_ he decidedly improves on the taste and morals of the France of 1630-1660, whether tested by d'Artagnan's _Mémoires_ or by the more authentic works of Tallemant and de Retz. He is infinitely more delicate, he apologises for what he justly calls the "infamies" of certain proceedings of his heroes, and he puts heart and sentiment even into the light love of Milady's _soubrette._ If d'Artagnan "had no youth, no heart, only ambition," he acquires a heart as he goes on: and, indeed, never lacked one--for friends of his own sex.