Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/39

Rh had better confine himself to his newspaper and the circulating library when he wants anything to read. They are as varied in length as they are in subject; there are pieces of half a dozen pages for the man who has a few minutes to fill up, and pieces of a hundred for him who can devote a more solid part of the day to them.

The literary prefaces are certainly not the least interesting, although Mérimée never cared to be as good a purely literary critic as he undoubtedly might have been. The best is almost beyond question the "Beyle," where his intense interest in the man and in life makes up, not merely for any deficiencies in pure literary handling on the part of the critic, but almost for any similiar [sic] deficiencies on the part of the subject himself. What with the presumed and what with the undoubted relations between the two men, their temperaments, and their productions, the peculiar appeal of the piece is such as it would be very difficult to find elsewhere; and the play of undercurrent feeling and thought, now ex-[missing words] [sic] any similar deficiencies on the part of the subject, is extraordinarily attractive. The "Cervantes," the "Froissart" and the "Brantôme," especially the last, are written with that unfeigned gusto which counts for so much in literature. The "Pushkin," the "Tourgueineff" and