Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/17

 T is curious that while a great deal has been written, and while much has been written very well, on the personality of the author of Colomba, the writers have usually rather shuffled off the duty of thoroughly appraising his literary character and position. Except by a few violent partisans of Republicanism or Romanticism, that position has always been acknowledged to be a very high one, from the time when, nearly eighty years ago, Goethe set his seal upon its patent; but there has been a certain half-heartedness in most of the acknowledgments, and (which is worse), a certain failure to survey the whole subject adequately. Even Mr. Pater's essay, one of the best critical things on Mérimée in any language, is not quite just, and its injustice is due to its inadequacy.

The secret of failure, if failure there has been—and it has been admitted by some of the acutest writers on Mérimée themselves —is, I