It was to them that he wrote, in
the dedication of the edition of his works:--
"To my collaborators: My dear friends, I have often been
reproached for the number of my collaborators; for myself, who am
happy to count among them only friends, I regret, on the contrary,
that I have not more of them. I am often asked why I have not
worked alone. To this I will reply that I have probably neither
the wit nor the talent for that; but if I had had them I should
still have preferred our literary fraternity and alliance. The few
works I have produced alone have been to me a labor; those I have
produced with you have been a pleasure."
Eugene Scribe was born December 25, 1791, at Paris, Rue Saint-
Denis, near the Marche des Innocents. His father, whom he lost
early, kept a silk store, at the sign of the Chat Noir, where he
had made a considerable fortune. Eugene commenced his career as a
dramatic writer in 1811. From that time to his death (February 20,
1861), he composed alone, or with associates, and had represented
on the various stages of Paris, more than four hundred plays. M.
Vitel said, at the reception of M. Octave Feuillet, at the French
Academy, March 26, 1863:--
"There was in Scribe a powerful and truly superior faculty, that
assured to him and explained to me his supremacy in the theatre of
his day. It was a gift of dramatic invention that perhaps no one
before him has possessed; the gift of discovering at every step,
almost apropos of nothing, theatrical combinations of a novel and
striking effect; and of discovering them, not in the germ only, or
barely sketched, but in relief, in action, and already on the
stage.
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