Page:French Poets and Novelists.djvu/403

 MÉRIMÉE'S LETTERS.

many readers who take pleasure in clever French books have found themselves of late deploring the sadly diminished supply of this commodity. The past few years have brought forth no new literary names of the first rank in France and have witnessed the decline and extinction of most of the elder talents. It is a long time now since a French book has made a noise on valid grounds. Here, at last, however, is a publication which, in six weeks, has reached a fourth edition and which most people of taste are talking about. But, though new in subject, the two volumes to which we allude belong to the literature of thirty years ago. They are the last contribution to literature of a writer whose reputation was made in the early part of the century. We recently heard it declared by a competent critic that they contain the best writing (as simple writing) that has appeared in France since Voltaire. This is strong language; but the reader of