Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/48

Rh 38 M E R M E R of the letters which have been published as Lettres CL une Inconnue, the other of the letters addressed to Sir Antonio Panizzi, the late librarian of the British Museum. Various, though idle and rather impertinent, conjectures have been made as to the identity of the inconnue just mentioned. It is sufficient to say that the acquaintance extended over many years, that it partook at one time of the character of love, at another of that of simple friendship, and that Me rime e is exhibited under the most surprisingly diverse lights, most of them more or less amiable, and all interest ing. The correspondence with Panizzi has somewhat less personal interest. Me rime e made the acquaintance origin ally by a suggestion that his correspondent should buy for the Museum some MSS. which were in the possession of Stendhal s sister, and for some years it was chiefly confined to correspondence. But Me rime e often visited England, where he had many friends (among whom the late Mr Ellice of Glengarry was the chief), and certain similarities of taste drew him closer to Panizzi personally, while during part of the empire the two served as the channel for a kind of unofficial diplomacy between the emperor and certain English statesmen. These letters are full of shrewd aper$us on the state of Europe at different times. Both series abound in gossip, in amusing anecdotes, in sharp literary criticism, while both contain evidences of a cynical and Rabelaisian or Swiftian humour which was very strong in Me rime e. This characteristic is said to be so prominent in a correspondence with another friend, which now lies in the library at Avignon, that there is but little chance of its ever being printed. A fourth collection of letters, of much inferior extent and interest, has been printed by M. Blaze de Bury under the title of Lettres d, une autre Inconnue. In the latter years of his life Me rime e suffered very much from ill health. It was necessary for him to pass all his winters at Cannes, where his constant companions were two aged English ladies, friends of his mother. The terrible year found him completely broken in health, and anticipating the worst for France. He lived long enough to see his fears realized, and to express his grief in some last letters, and he died on September 23, 1870. Merimee s character (which has been unwarrantably slandered by those to whom political differences or his sarcastic intolerance of &quot; pose &quot; in literature made him obnoxious) was a peculiar and in some respects an unfortunate one, but by no means unintelligible, and perhaps in a minor degree not uncommon. Partly by tempera ment, partly it is said owing to some childish experience, when he discovered that he had been duped and determined never to be so again, not least owing to the example of Beyle, who was a friend of his family, and of whom he saw much, Merimee appears at a comparatively early age to have imposed upon himself as a duty the maintenance of an attitude of sceptical indifference and sarcastic criticism. He certainly succeeded. Although, as has been said, a man of singularly warm and affectionate feelings, he obtained the credit of being a cold-hearted cynic ; and, although he was both independent and disinterested, he was abused as a hanger-on and toad-eater of the imperial court. Both imputations were wholly undeserved, and indeed were prompted to a great extent by the resentment felt by his literary equals on the other side at the cool ridicule with which he met them. But he deserved in some of the bad as well as many of the good senses of the term the phrase which we have applied to him of a man of the Renaissance. He had the warm partisanship and amiability towards friends and the scorpion- like sting for his foes, he had the ardent delight in learning and especially in matters of art and belles lettres, he had the scepticism, the voluptuousness, the curious delight in the contemplation of the horrible, which marked the men of letters of the humanist period. Like them he was a man of the world, and a man who without any baseness liked a king s palace better than a philosopher s hovel. Like them he had an acute judgment in matters of business, and like them a singular consciousness of the nothingness of things. Even his literary work has this Renaissance character. It is tolerably ex tensive, amounting to some seventeen or eighteen volumes, but its bulk is not great for a life which was not short, and which was occupied at least nominally in little else. About a third of it con sists of the letters already mentioned, which will always be to those who delight in personal literature the most attractive part, and which, though in a fragmentary fashion, are really important as throwing side lights on history. Rather more than another third consists of the official work which has been already alluded to reports, essays, short historical sketches, the chief of which latter is a history of Pedro the Cruel, and another of the curious pretender known in Russian story as the false Demetrius. Some of the literary essays, such as those on Beyle, on Turguenief, &c. , where a personal element enters, are excellent. Against others and against the larger historical sketches admirable as they are M. Taine s criticism that they want life has some force. They are, however, all marked by Merimee s admirable style, by his sound and accurate scholarship, his strong intellectual grasp of whatever he handled, his cool unprejudiced views, his marvellous faculty of designing and proportioning the treatment of his work. It is, however, in the remaining third of his work, consisting entirely of tales either in narrative or in dramatic form, and especially in the former, that his full power is perceived. He translated a certain number of things (chiefly from the Russian) ; but his fame does not rest on these, on his already-mentioned youthful supercheries, or on his later semi- dramatic works. There remain about a score of tales extending in point of composition over exactly forty years, and in length from that of Colombo,, the longest, which fills about one hundred and fifty pages, to that of L EriUvement de la Rcdoute, which fills just half a dozen. They are unquestionably the best things of their kind written during the century, the only nouvcllcs that can challenge comparison with them being the very best of Gautier, and one or two of Balzac. The motives are sufficiently different. In Colombo, and Matco Falcone, the Corsican point of honour is drawn on ; in Carmen (written apparently after reading Sorrow s Spanish books), the gipsy character ; in La Venus d llle and Lokis (two of the finest of all), certain grisly superstitions, in the former case that known in a milder form as the ring given to Venus, in the latter a variety of the were-wolf fancy. Arsene Guillot is a singular satire full of sarcastic pathos on popular morality and religion ; La Chambre Bleue, an 18th-century conte, worthy of Crebillon for grace and wit, and superior to him in delicacy ; The Capture of the, Redoubt just mentioned is a perfect piece of description ; L Abbe Aubain is again satirical ; La Double Miprise (the authorship of which was objected to Merimee when he was elected of the Academy) is an exercise in analysis strongly impregnated with the spirit of Stendhal, but better written than anything of that writer s. These stories, with his letters, assure Merimee s place in literature at the very head of the French prose writers of the century. He had undertaken an edition of Brantome for the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, but it was never completed. Merimee s works have only been gradually published since his death. The latest, The Letters to Panizzi, which have also ap peared in English, bears date 1881. There is as yet no uniform or handsome edition, but almost everything is obtainable in the collections of MM. Charpentier and Calmann Levy. (G. SA.) MERINO. See SHEEP and WOOL. MERIONETH (Welsh Meirionydd), a maritime county of North Wales, is bounded N. by Carnarvon and Denbigh, S.E. by Denbigh and Montgomery, and W. by Cardigan Bay. It is triangular in shape, its greatest length north east to south-west being 45 miles, and its greatest breadth north-west to south-east about 30 miles. The area is 385,291 acres, or about 600 square miles. Next to Carnarvon, Meri oneth is the most mountainous county in Wales. If the scenery is less bold and striking than that of Carnarvon, it excels it in richness, variety, and picturesque beauty. Its lofty mountains are interpenetrated by dark deep dells or smiling vales. The outlines of its rugged crags are softened and adorned by rich foliage. The sea views are frequently fine, and rivers, lakes, and waterfalls add a romantic charm to the valleys. The highest summits in the county are the picturesque Cader Idris (which divides into three peaks, one, Pen-y-Gadair, having an altitude of 2914 feet), Aran Fawddwy (2955), Arenig-fawr (2818), Moel-wyn (2566), Rhobell-fawr (2360). The finest valleys are those of Dyfi, Dysyni, Talyllyn, Mawddach, and Festi- niog. The river Dyfrdwy or Dee rises 10 miles north-west of Bala, and, after passing through Bala Lake, flows north east by Corwen to Denbighshire. The Dyfi rises in a small lake near Aran Fawddwy, and expands into an estuary of Cardigan Bay. The Mawddach or Maw, from the north of Aran Fawddwy, has a course of 12 miles south west, during which it is joined by several other streams. The Dwyryd and other streams unite in forming the estuary of Traeth Bach. The finest waterfalls are the