Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/33

Rh while he also possessed a fourth and a fifth quality not less valuable than any of them, a piercing judgment and a robust common sense. No research was too troublesome for him; no man in Europe was his superior for pure style in his own language; and he was on the one hand the author of Colomba, on the other the author of the Enlèvement de la Redoute. One might have expected from him historical work as brilliant as Caryle's, but less volcanic, as masterly as Thucydides, but free from obscurity of phrase and awkwardness of arrangement. Yet, as a matter of fact, his writings of this class have never, I think, been much read even in France, while out of it they are hardly known, except to those who have special interest in their subjects. Not that these subjects are by any means devoid of interest in themselves, though some of them may be chargeable with a slightly parochial character, with handling what have been called in a famous phrase "battles of kites and crows." The two longer Roman studies deal with hackneyed subjects, but the weariness of ancient history, which is felt or affected by some, is balanced by something quite different from weariness on the part of others.

The History of Pedro the Cruel is one of the