Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/28

xx interval to write short stories again. But the most important production of his pen during this time, even as pure literature, and by far the most important as providing stuff for the reader and material for the student of humanity, is contained in his Letters.

It is necessary to read only two or three of these to see that Mérimée was a born letter-writer; and if, later in the century, it becomes possible for anyone to collect and edit them completely, the collection will probably equal that of Horace Walpole's in size, and yield to none in quality and variety of interest. As it is, though we have no very early ones and though what was apparently the longest and largest of all, the correspondence with Madame de Montijo, has never been published save in scraps and extracts, the known bulk is great. There is first and foremost the famous sequence (rather insequential, according to M. Filon) of the Lettres À une Inconnue; then those to Panizzi; then those À une autre Inconnue, which are the least interesting of all; then the extremely attractive and characteristic ones to Mrs. Senior which Count d'Haussonville published; then those which appeared a few years ago in the Revue des Deux Mondes, besides the abundant extracts in M. Filon's Mérimée et ses Amis, the