plays written for herself by a celebrated Spanish actress), was a gross imposture, aggravated by the portrait of Clara which formed the frontispiece, and in which none except the chosen few could detect the features

of Prosper Mérimée. The identity of Clara Gazul was of course eagerly sought for; the editor had taken good care to make the search a difficult one; yet even so one Spanish patriot was found bold enough to allow that the translation was fairly good, but nothing to the original. The plays themselves are a selection from a number of similar efforts read privately to a circle of friends, at the time when a spirit of revolt against the canons of the classic drama was already in the air. They are witty and readable, but not acting plays, any more than are the PROVERBES of Alfred de Musset. The chief of them (such as LE CIEL ET L'ENFER, UNE FEMME EST UN DIABLE, L'OCCASION) have common features. The scene in each

is laid in some Spanish colony: the characters of a lady (or two), a lover, and a confessor figure in each; and in all of them the author discloses thus early his singular animosity against Catholicism and its ministers. LE CARROSSE DU SAINT-SACREMENT (now included in this collection, though of somewhat later date) breathes the same unedifying spirit, and contains also the first specimen of that peculiar type of woman, the femme méchante,

1 One of Mérimée's early and unpublished dramas was entitled CROMWELL, about which one of the audience records that "the scene changed a thousand times and the action was multiplied by indefinite complications." Now, if there are still any persons curious about the origin of the Romantic movement, it may be noted that this CROMWELL preceded the famous CROMWELL by at least three years, though it should be added of course that, except in a contempt for the hapless Unities, Mérimée had not the least affinity with the Romantic spirit as it soon came to be understood and personified in Victor Hugo.

malicious, mischief-loving, and adorable, who, in life and in literature, fascinated Mérimée so much. It is the story of the actress who playfully atones to the Church for her irregularities by presenting her coach to be used henceforth for conveying the last consolations of religion to the dying. The subject might be treated without offence; but Mérimée gives a malignant twist to the Peruvian legend by representing as the freak of a capricious woman what in the original version was a deed of sincere penitence. LE CARROSSE is the only dramatic work of Mérimée that was put to the test of performance. Years later, when its author was a famous Academician, Mdlle. Augustine Brohan of the Comédie Française, thinking to find a suitable part for herself in the wayward actress of LE CARROSSE, prevailed upon the directors of the Théâtre Française, and upon Mérimée with much reluctance and despite his own judgment, to have the piece produced. This was in 1850; and nothing can be said of it except that Mdlle. Brohan's dresses were much admired. After a few nights the play was dropped. Mérimée never professed to be a dramatist, or cared to be; though that he might have gone far in this direction seems evident, both otherwise and from the fact that so accomplished a playwright as Émile Augier pressed him on one occasion urgently, but vainly, for his collaboration.

To return, however, to the early years. The success of this first imposture suggested another. From Gazul to Guzla was only a slight transposition; and LA GUZLA, a collection of Illyrian songs by one Ivan Maglanovitch was an even more remarkable mystification than CLARA GAZUL, involving as it did not only a biography of the supposed poet, with notes, appendices and so forth, but also a set of ideas and

sentiments wholly foreign to the French nature. LA GUZLA was taken seriously by many eminent persons, among others by the Russian poet Pouchkine, who translated into his own language some of these "specimens of Illyrian genius"; and the great Goethe was so far impressed that he prided himself (in a letter to Mérimée) upon having penetrated the author's identity. We can fancy how that author must have chuckled at all this stir. His purpose, he tells us, had been to travel in Illyria for the sake of local colour before concocting this book, but the necessary funds were wanting. "Never mind," he writes to the friend who was to have accompanied him; "let us describe our tour, and then with the proceeds of the sale we will go and see whether the country resembles our description." The result was LA GUZLA. "From that time forward," he adds, "I was disgusted with 'local colour,' having seen how easily it could be manufactured"; a flippant remark obviously aimed at Hugo and his school. Neither CLARA GAZUL nor LA GUZLA produced any pecuniary profit; but such versatility versatility and power in a young man who was not yet twenty-five could not fail to make Mérimée known. And so he betook himself to more genuine work. On LA JACQUERIE, a series of scenes in dialogue describing the peasants' revolt of the fourteenth century, an amount of time and labour was bestowed out of all proportion to the cold reception the book met with; a reception which no reader, who has tried to wade through this curious mixture of narrative and drama, will much wonder at. LA CHRONIQUE DE CHARLES IX. on the other hand, which Mérimée calls a worthless novel, became popular at once, and remains, with its striking incidents and strong characters, a solitary specimen of what its

author might have accomplished in the field of historical romance.1

But Mérimée's ambition, and at twenty-seven it may be supposed he still had some, pointed rather to the Academy than to the favour of the multitude for which, now and always, he had a very hearty contempt. Having shown that he could write a novel, he contented himself henceforth in fiction with short stories, while in graver matters he took up, as the fancy seized him, history, archæology, travel, and the study of languages. The twenty years beginning with 1830 were the busiest of his life. In literature alone he touched and adorned almost every department; he was at the same time a Government official, went much into society, and led something of a gay life generally. It was in 1830 that he first visited Spain, and at Madrid made the acquaintance of the Comtesse de Montijo, as also of the two little girls, one of whom was destined to rise so high. This visit happened to coincide with the Revolution of July; and Mérimée laments that his absence from Paris caused him to miss " so fine a spectacle," a word, by the way, which indicates pretty well his part in life generally, that of a spectator, interested at first but yawning more and more as the play goes on.

This particular spectacle, however, influenced Mérimée's career considerably. Under the new reign he began official life, first as private secretary to the Minister of the Interior, and a few years later as Inspector-General of Historic Monuments. In this position, which he held for twenty years, it was his lot to travel from one end of France to the other, to draw up many reports, and to come in contact with every variety of provincialism.

1 LA CHRONIQUE DU RÈGNE DE CHARLES IX. has been recently translated into English by Mr. Saintsbury.

Naturally much of his literary work is connected, directly or indirectly, with his professional capacity. Some of this, such as ÉTUDES SUR LES ARTS AU MOYEN AGE, ÉTUDES SUR LES BEAUX-ARTS, NOTES D'UN VOYAGE DANS LE MIDI, &c., is for the general reader; the greater part is of a technical nature and would demand an expert for its appreciation. It is commonly admitted that Mérimée, in spite of his inability to grasp the religious spirit of Gothic architecture, was a good Inspector of Monuments, that he elucidated many points of archæology, and that he saved many a venerable building from unwise restoration. Tact and temper, as we know without going to France, are often required to avert the reckless use of whitewash by well-meaning local authorities. Mérimée had plenty of tact, and plenty of opportunity for its exercise, especially in dealing with his enemies the priests, of whom, in his examination of churches, he had to see a good deal. Whatever he felt on such occasions, he managed to repress his feelings; although in his whole career he found only one priest to speak well of, and that was the curé who, objecting to some repairs which the Corporation wanted to enforce, closed his church and suspended all services until he had gained his point. This was a man after Mérimée's own heart.

But we cannot linger over the official Mérimée, nor yet over Mérimée the historian, another of his numerous activities. The critical faculty, learning, and a terse lucid style (the best French prose that can be found, as some good judges affirm), these go far to the making of a historian; but in the faith which is needed for generalising particulars, Mérimée, as Taine said, was quite deficient. Too sceptical to trust any theory, he avoided all and confined himself

rigidly to the exposition of facts. LA GUERRE SOCIALE and LA CONJURATION DE CATALINA suggested this criticism to M. Taine, but it is applicable even to such to such comparatively popular works as the PORTRAITS HISTORIQUES ET LITTÉRARIES and the HISTOIRE DE DON PEDRE DE CASTILLE. It should be observed, however, that M. de Loménie, Mérimée's successor in the Academy, put forward another and more flattering explanation of Mérimée's dryness as a historian. Since he possessed, says M. de Loménie, in the highest degree the inventive faculty, he was so afraid of this intruding upon the sobriety of history that, to guard against the danger, he purposely constrained himself to the opposite extreme. This engaging theory, so full of consolation for unread authors, sounds at first like one of those bits of extravagance which we expect to find in Academic eulogies; yet there may be something in it to account for the contrast between Mérimée's caution in history, and his freedom in fiction or semi-fictional subjects. morsel, for example, like LA PRISE DE LA REDOUTE (which no doubt is pure fact) is sufficient to show how well he could combine vividness and brevity, when not trammelled by a consciousness of the dignity of history.

A

But Mérimée was perverse enough to write history for his own pleasure, and it pleased him generally to follow rare and remote bye-paths. The Social War is a page in Roman annals on the details of which, at any rate before Mommsen, even students might without blushing have owned themselves deplorably ignorant. Yet LA GUERRE SOCIALE, which appeared in 1841, did as much as anything to pave the way for Mérimée's election to the Academy in 1844.

In conferring this honour the Academicians had collectively pardoned,

as doubtless they had individually admired, many trivial productions of the same pen during the last ten years, the greater part, in fact, of those admirable tales which will ensure their author a lasting fame among all lovers of literature-TAMANGO, LE VASE ETRUSQUE, LA PARTIE DE TRICTRAC, LA DOUBLE MÉPRISE, LA VENUS D'ILLE, COLOMBA, ARSENE GUILLOT. It so happened that the last-named of these was published on the morrow of Mérimée's election, and great was the scandal among many of his new colleagues that the man, whom they had taken to themselves as a grave and erudite historian, should appear as a realistic novelist, dealing with such a subject as the love of a common courtesan. The treatment of this subject in fiction, though it had the precedent of MANON LESCAUT, was not in those days so usual as it has since become; moreover it was an unexpected development on Mérimée's part, for ARSÈNE GUILLOT is unique among his tales, as the only one which deals with what it is now the fashion to call a problem of actual life. He does not indeed handle it in the fashionable method which, happily for fiction, had not then been invented; ARSENE GUILLOT is simply the story, pathetic by the absence of all attempt at pathos, of an unfortunate woman whose love was her whole existence. And in recalling the mass of literature that has since been devoted to this matter, we feel inclined to subscribe heartily to M. Taine's remark: "The wax-taper offered by Arsène Guillot is a summary of many volumes on the religion of the people and the true feelings of courtesans."

It is this faculty of summarising, of impressing character and situation by a few words or sentences, that makes Mérimée so perfect a master of fiction. If we add to the stories already named CARMEN (1845), L'ABBÉ AU

BAIN (1846), and two of much later date, LA CHAMBRE BLEUE and LOKIS, the list will be tolerably complete. Of these COLOMBA best illustrates Mérimée's manner of interweaving in his fiction, without the least pedantry, a large amount of information. Besides being an exciting story, it is incidentally "a philosophic study of primitive man as seen in the institution of the vendetta." Though contained in no more than one hundred and fifty pages, it is a full novel; how full may easily be tested by any one who will analyse it, and then do the same by, say, one of M. Zola's novels six times as long; he will find that the latter is more easily compressible than the former. Yet with all due deference to the much-lauded COLOMBA, we may confess to a conviction that Mérimée's stories, as compared with one another, are better and more typical of his genius in proportion to their brevity. On this ground CARMEN may be preferred to COLOMBA, and LA VENUS D'ILLE to CARMEN. The central idea of each of these three is the same, the femme méchante, Colomba the beautiful savage, Carmen the baneful gipsy, and the statue with its "tigress-like expression," its "suggestion of indescribable malice." M. Filon observes that Mérimée's taste in men was for brigands, and in women for gipsies. This remark, applied to his stories, may explain why they mostly turn on the strange, the fantastic, the abnormal. Throughout there is a vein of mockery, as though the author were laughing partly at himself, partly at his reader. Could anything be more gruesome than the accident which is the foundation of LOKIS, a story only saved from repulsiveness by its vagueness and improbability? What more tantalising, and even ridiculous, than the abrupt termination of LA PARTIE DE TRICTRAC, in the anticlimax produced

by the sudden appearance of a whale which interrupts the captain's yarn at its most critical part? Or what more fantastic than the idea of the dark fluid which trickles into LA CHAMBRE BLEUE to the terror of the occupants who think it blood and find it to be port-wine? So the story ends in a laugh, but not without suggesting a possible and horrible inversion of the incident.

Idle subjects most of these, and none (except ARSÈNE GUILLOT) Coming close to the realities of life; such might be a verdict according with the modern tendency of fiction. Yet

in one sense Mérimée may be claimed by the Realists, for no writer has more bluntly despised every form of euphemism; frankness is one of the virtues of cynicism. It is a more undoubted and peculiar distinction that each one of his stories is an almost flawless piece of workmanship, the like of which can hardly be found. Preference must be a matter of individual taste; but in the way of constructive skill, there can be little doubt that LA VENUS D'ILLE is his masterpiece, the ideal type of all that class of fiction whose object is to produce artificial fear with the least obvious use of artifice. However often read, each fresh perusal will reveal some subtle details which help towards the general effect. Passing through the phases of curiosity, interest, excitement, the reader is left at the end in that kind of uneasy conjecture which makes the ordinary person instinctively look over shoulder, half expecting to see something. The basis of the story, M. Filon has discovered, was a Latin legend in some medieval chronicle ; the composition and treatment were of course. Mérimée's own. And certainly no ghosts, phantoms, or vampires, -not all the machinery of the supernatural so beloved by the Roman

his

ticists, not even the most thrilling narratives of Edgar Poe-appear to us so effectual on the reader's mind. The whole art of the thing, as Mérimée himself sardonically pointed out, lies in the gently graduated transition from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the commonplace to the abnormal. The principles which should govern the use of the preternatural in fiction he indicates

a matter-of-fact way, suggestive,

as M. Filon says, of a recipe from a cookery-book. cookery-book. "Take a few clearlydefined characters, quaint but possible; give the most minute reality to their features; then from the queer to the marvellous the transition can be made so slight that the reader finds himself in the region of pure fantasy, before he is aware that the real world is far behind him."

on

The attraction exercised Mérimée's fiction by the "adorable and malicious woman" has already been referred to; the influence of this same personality on his life is bound to interest all those who associate him chiefly with the romance of the Incognita. How many a great lady would fain have let it be believed that she was the Unknown, it would be perilous to guess. But Mdlle. Jenny Dacquin (for the identity may be taken as established) was neither a Parisian fine lady nor an English peeress; she was the daughter of a Boulogne lawyer. The acquaintance began in an orthodox literary way out of some remarks addressed to Mérimée about his CHRONIQUE DE CHARLES IX., and his replies thereto; but who the writer was, beyond the fact that she was a woman of culture, remained a mystery to Mérimée until they met in 1840. Then, whatever ideals he might previously have formed of his Fair Unknown, he was quite captivated by the original; and from that time