Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/34

xxvi most typical historical romances of mediæval times: and if it is rendered awkward to deal with by the previous deahngs of Froissart, the most delightful of all chroniclers, this does not apply everywhere, and Froissart himself can always be drawn upon for illustration and ornament. Indeed, as it is, Mérimée's Froissartesque versions of old Spanish chronicles are admirable sets-off to his story. That of the False Demetrius is again almost an ideal canvas for a historical novel: and the still obscurer fortunes and traditions as to Stenka Razine, if they suggest verse rather than prose, are perfectly Byronic. To me I confess the actual books are not unattractive. The extraordinary limpidity of the style, which never drags, or ruffles itself, or degenerates, in all the obscure and complicated narrative; the critical judgment of character and probability, of fact and setting, more than save them. But I can quite understand their want of popularity. They are full of horrors; and though Mérimée does not in the least gloat over these, he recounts them a little too dispassionately. He may seem also a little too much to remember that he has been a romancer at other times, and to impress upon his readers that he is the soberest of historians here. He will never