Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/30

xxii as it appears to have been painless and sudden, while he had for many months, and even many years, been suffering the most harassing inconvenience always, and sometimes the most intense pain, from a complication of lung, and other disorders.

It is usual, in studies of this kind, to subjoin immediately to the biographical part an estimate of the subject's character. But, as I have already observed, Mérimée's work and its purely literary qualities have to be taken in a rather uncommon conjunction with his life that each may interpret the other, and any characterisation had better be postponed. On one point, however, it may be as well to speak at once.

It has been usual, and for a long time I was myself not disinclined, to regard Mérimée's curious cynicism as to no small an extent a reflex if not an imitation, of the not entirely dissimilar attitude of Henri Beyle (De Stendhal) whom he knew when he was himself young, and as long as Beyle's life permitted. That there are resemblances nobody can deny, except in mere paradox; and Mérimée's own very remarkable article on Beyle is almost sufficient to show the sympathy between them. In the last twenty years or so, however, a great deal of new light has been shed, by fresh publication, on Beyle and