Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/23

Rh has always openly or privately held to be barbarian, subject, character, colour; the clear inclination to the supernatural which accompanies his would-be rationalism; the passion which underlies his impassive exterior, and the sentiment which is never far behind his apparent cynicism—nay the very forms and colours of that cynicism itself—are all Romantic. It is, however, really characteristic of him that he began with two books, in extreme Romantic style and admittedly of immense Romantic influence, which are among the most audacious and cold-blooded, if also among the most successful and finished, of hoaxes in literature. There never was any such person as "Clara Gazul," the pretended Spanish comic dramatist whose Theatre startled all Europe and delighted all lovers of Romance in the year 1825; there never was any such person as her spiritual kinsman, Hyacinthe Maglanovitch, the translation of whose Illyrian lyrics followed two years later as La Guzla. And the fact that the title of the latter book is ostentatiously anagrammatised from the author's name of the other (or vice versa) is a sufficient measure of the calm audacity of the author.

Still before 1830 and in complete outward accordance with the movement, he produced in 1828 the singular series of dialogue-sketches