ridicule, and yet his whole
attitude may be ridiculous.

Such a gentleman was Prosper Merimee. He had the gift of imagination,
psychological insight, the artist's shaping hand. His early romantic
plays were put forth as those of Clara Gazul, a Spanish _comedienne_.
His Illyrian poems, _La Guzla_, were the work of an imaginary
Hyacinthe Maglanovich, and Merimee could smile gently at the
credulity of a learned public. He took up the short story where Xavier
de Maistre, who had known how to be both pathetic and amiably humorous,
and Charles Nodier, who had given play to a graceful fantasy, left
it. He purged it of sentiment, he reduced fantasy to the law of the
imagination, and produced such works as _Carmen_ and _Colomba_, each
one a little masterpiece of psychological truth, of temperate local
colour, of faultless narrative, of pure objective art. The public
must not suppose that he cares for his characters or what befell them;
he is an archaeologist, a savant, and only by accident a teller of
tales. Merimee had more sensibility than he would confess; it shows
itself for moments in the posthumous _Lettres a une Inconnue_; but
he has always a bearing-rein of ironical pessimism to hold his
sensibility in check. The egoism of the romantic school appears in
Merimee inverted; it is the egoism not of effusion but of disdainful
reserve.[1]

[Footnote 1: It is one of Merimee's merits that he awakened in France
an interest in Russian literature.]

CHAPTER V
HISTORY--LITERARY CRITICISM

I

The progress of historical literature in the nineteenth century was
aided by the change which had taken place in philosophical opinion;
instead of a rigid system of abstract ideas, which disdained the
thought of past ages as superstition, had come an eclecticism guided
by spiritual beliefs. The religions of various lands and various ages
were viewed with sympathetic interest; the breach of continuity from
mediaeval to modern times was repaired; the revolutionary spirit of
individualism gave way before a broader concern for society; the
temper in politics grew more cautious and less dogmatic; the great
events of recent years engendered historical reflection; literary
art was renewed by the awakening of the romantic imagination.

The historical learning of the Empire is represented by Daunou, an
explorer in French literature; by Ginguene, the literary historian
of Italy; by Michaud, who devoted his best years to a _History of
th