​MÉRIMÉE, PROSPER (1803–1870), French novelist, archaeologist,essayist, and in all these capacities one of the greatestmasters of French style during the 19th century, was born atParis on the 28th of September 1803. His grandfather, ofNorman abstraction, had been a lawyer and steward to themaréchal de Broglie. His father, Jean François Léonor Mérimée(1757–1836), was a painter of repute. Mérimée had Englishblood in his veins on the mother’s side, and had English proclivitiesin many ways. He was educated for the bar, but enteredthe public service instead. A young man at the time of theRomantic movement, he felt its influence strongly, thoughhis peculiar temperament prevented him from joining any ofthe côteries of the period. Nothing was more prominentamong the romantics than the fancy, as Mérimée himself putsit, for “local colour,” the more unfamiliar the better. Heexhibited this in an unusual way. In 1825 he published whatpurported to be the dramatic works of a Spanish lady, ClaraGazul, with a preface stating circumstantially how the supposedtranslator, one Joseph L’Estrange, had met the gifted poetessat Gibraltar. This was followed by a still more audaciousand still more successfulsupercherie. In 1827 appeared a smallbook entitledla Guzla (the anagram of Gazul), and givingitself out as translated from the Illyrian of a certain HyacintheMaglanovich. This book, which has greater formal meritthanClara Gazul, is said to have taken in Sir John Bowring,a competent Slav scholar, the Russian poet Poushkin, andsome German authorities, although not only had it no original,but, as Mérimée declares, a few words of Illyrian and a bookor two of travels and topography were the author’s onlymaterials. In the next year appeared a short dramatic romance,La Jacquerie, in which are visible Mérimée’s extraordinaryfaculty of local and historical colour, his command of language,his grim irony, and a certain predilection for tragic and terriblesubjects, which was one of his numerous points of contact withthe men of the Renaissance. This in its turn was followedby a still better piece, theChronique de Charles IX. (1829),which stands towards the 16th century much as theJacqueriedoes towards the middle ages. All these works were to acertain extent second-hand. But they exhibited all the futureliterary qualities of the author save the two chiefest, his wonderfullysevere and almost classical style, and his equally classicalsolidity and statuesqueness of construction.

He had already obtained a considerable position in the civilservice, and after the revolution of July he waschef de cabinetto two different ministers. He was then appointed to the morecongenial post of inspector-general of historical monuments.Mérimée was a born archaeologist, combining linguistic facultyof a very unusual kind with accurate scholarship, with remarkablehistorical appreciation, and with a sincere love for the artsof design and construction, in the former of which he had somepractical skill. In his official capacity he published numerousreports, some of which, with other similar pieces, have beenrepublished in his works. He also devoted himself to historyproper during the latter years of the July monarchy, and publishednumerous essays and works of no great length, chieflyon Spanish, Russian and ancient Roman history. He didnot, however, neglect novel writing during this period, andnumerous short tales, almost without exception masterpieces,appeared, chiefly in theRevue de Paris. The best of all,Colomba,a Corsican story of extraordinary power, appeared in 1840.He travelled a good deal; and in one of his journeys to Spain,about the middle of Louis Philippe’s reign, he made an acquaintancedestined to influence his future life not a little—that ofMme de Montijo, mother of the future empress Eugénie.Mérimée, though in manner and language the most cynicalof men, was a devoted friend, and shortly before the accessionof Napoleon III. he had occasion to show this. His friend,Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja, was accused of having stolenvaluable manuscripts and books from French libraries, andMérimée took his part so warmly that he was actually sentencedto and underwent fine and imprisonment. He had been electedof the Academy in 1844, and also of the Academy of Inscriptions,of which he was a prominent member. Between 1840 and 1850he wrote more tales, the chief of which wereArsène GuillotandCarmen (1847), this last, on a Spanish subject, hardlyranking belowColomba.

The empire made a considerable difference in Mérimée’slife. His sympathies were against democracy, and his habitualcynicism and his irreligious prejudices made legitimism distastefulto him. But the marriage of Napoleon III. withthe daughter of Mme de Montijo at once enlisted what wasalways strongest with Mérimée—the sympathy of personalfriendship—on the emperor’s side. He was made a senator,but his most important rôle was that of a constant and valuedprivate friend of both the “master and mistress of the house,”as he calls the emperor and empress in his letters. He wasoccasionally charged with a kind of irregular diplomacy, andonce, in the matter of the emperor’sCaesar, he had to giveliterary assistance to Napoleon. But for the most part hewas strictly theami de la maison. At the Tuileries, at Compiègne,at Biarritz, he was a constant though not always avery willing guest, and his influence over the empress wasvery considerable and was fearlessly exerted, though he used tocall himself, in imitation of Scarron, “le bouffon de sa majesté.”He found, however, time for not a few more tales, of whichmore will be said presently, and for correspondences, whichare not the least of his literary achievements, while they havean extraordinary interest of matter. One of these consistsof the letters which have been published asLettres à une inconnue,another of the letters addressed to Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarianof the British Museum. After various conjectures it seemsthat theinconnue just mentioned was a certain Mlle JennyDaqin of Boulogne. The acquaintance extended over many​years; it partook at one time of the character of love, at anotherof that of simple friendship, and Mérimée is exhibited in theletters under the most surprisingly diverse lights, most of themmore or less amiable, and all interesting. The correspondencewith Panizzi has somewhat less personal interest. But Mériméeoften visited England, where he had many friends (amongwhom the late Mr Ellice of Glengarry was the chief), and certainsimilarities of taste drew him closer to Panizzi personally,while during part of the empire the two served as the channelfor a kind of unofficial diplomacy between the emperor andcertain English statesmen. These letters are full of shrewdaperçus on the state of Europe at different times. Both series,and others since published, abound in gossip, in amusing anecdotes,in sharp literary criticism, while both contain evidencesof a cynical and Rabelaisian or Swiftian humour which was verystrong in Mérimée. This characteristic is said to be so prominentin a correspondence with another friend, which now lies in thelibrary at Avignon, that there is but little chance of its everbeing printed. A fourth collection of letters, of much inferiorextent and interest, has been printed by Blaze de Bury underthe title ofLettres à une autre inconnue (1873), and others stillby d’Haussonville (1888), and in theRevue des Deux Mondes(1896). In the latter years of his life Mérimée suffered verymuch from ill-health. It was necessary for him to pass all hiswinters at Cannes, where his constant companions were twoaged English ladies, friends of his mother. The Terrible Yearfound him completely broken in health and anticipating theworst for France. He lived long enough to see his fears realized,and to express his grief in some last letters, and he died at Canneson the 23rd of September 1870.

Mérimée’s character was a peculiar and in some respectsan unfortunate one, but by no means unintelligible. Partlyby temperament, partly it is said owing to some childish experience,when he discovered that he had been duped and determinednever to be so again, not least owing to the example of HenriBeyle (Stendhal), who was a friend of his family, and of whomhe saw much, Mérimée appears at a comparatively early ageto have imposed upon himself as a duty the maintenance ofan attitude of sceptical indifference and sarcastic criticism.Although a man of singularly warm and affectionate feelings,he obtained the credit of being a cold-hearted cynic; and,though both independent and disinterested, he was abusedas a hanger-on of the imperial court. Both imputations werewholly undeserved, and indeed were prompted to a great extentby political spite or by the resentment felt by his literary equalson the other side at the cool ridicule with which he met them.But he deserved in some of the bad as well as many of thegood senses of the term the name of a man of the Renaissance.He had the warm partisanship and amiability towards friendsand the scorpion-like sting for his foes, he had the ardent delightin learning and especially in matters of art and belles lettres,he had the scepticism, the voluptuousness, the curious delightin the contemplation of the horrible, which marked the menof letters of the humanist period. Even his literary work hasthis Renaissance character. It is tolerably extensive, amountingto some seventeen or eighteen volumes, but its bulk is notgreat for a life which was not short, and which was occupied,at least nominally, in little else. About a third of it consistsof the letters already mentioned. Rather more than anotherthird consists of the official work which has been already alludedto—reports, essays, short historical sketches, the chief of whichlatter is a history of Pedro the Cruel (1843), and another ofthe curious pretender known in Russian story as the falseDemetrius (1852). Some of the literary essays, such as those onBeyle, on Turgueniev, &c., where a personal element enters,are excellent. Against others and against the larger historicalsketches—admirable as they are—Taine’s criticism that theywant life has some force. They are, however, all marked byMérimée’s admirable style, by his sound and accurate scholarship,his strong intellectual grasp of whatever he handled, hiscool unprejudiced views, his marvellous faculty of designing andproportioning the treatment of his work. In purely archaeologicalmatters hisDescription des peintures de Saint-Savinis very noteworthy. It is, however, in the remaining thirdof his work, consisting entirely of tales either in narrative or indramatic form, and especially in the former, that his full poweris perceived. He translated a certain number of things (chieflyfrom the Russian); but his fame does not rest on these, onhis already-mentioned youthful supercheries, or on his latersemi-dramatic works. There remain about a score of tales,extending in point of composition over exactly forty yearsand in length from that ofColomba, the longest, which fillsabout one hundred and fifty pages, to that ofl’Enlèvement dela redoute (1829), which fills just half a dozen. They are unquestionablythe best things of their kind written during the century,the onlynouvelles that can challenge comparison with thembeing the very best of Gautier, and one or two of Balzac. Themotives are sufficiently different. InColomba andMateoFalcone (1829), the Corsican point of honour is drawn on; inCarmen (written apparently after reading Borrow’s Spanishbooks), the gipsy character; inla Venus d'Ille (1837) andLokis(two of the finest of all), certain grisly superstitious, in theformer case that known in a milder form as the ring given toVenus, in the latter a variety of the were-wolf fancy.ArséneGuillot is a singular satire, full of sarcastic pathos, on popularmorality and religion;la Chamber bleue, an 18th-centuryconte,worthy of C. P. J. Crébillon for grace and wit, and superior tohim in delicacy;The Capture of the Redoubt just mentionedis a perfect piece of description;l'Abbé au bain is again satirical;laDouble méprise (the authorship of which was objected toMérimée when he was elected of the Academy) is an exercisein analysis strongly impregnated with the spirit of Stendhal,but better written than anything of that writer’s. Thesestories, with his letters, assure Mérimée’s place in literatureat the very head of the French prose writers of the century. Hehad undertaken an edition of Brantôme for the BibliothèqueElzévirienne, but it was never completed.

Mérimée’s works have only been gradually published since hisdeath. There is no uniform edition, but almost everything isobtainable in the collections of MM. Charpentier and CalmannLévy. Most of the sets of letters above referred to from those tothe firstinconnue, where the introduce was Taine, have essay-prefaceson Mérimée. Maurice Tourneux’sProsper Mérimée,sabibliographie (1876) andProsper Mérimée, ses portraits (1879), areuseful, while Émile Faguet and many other critics have dealtwith him incidentally. But the best single book on him by far istheMérimée et ses amis of Augustin Filon (1894). M. F. Chambon’sCorrespondence inédite (1897) gives little that is substantive, butsupplies and corrects a good many gaps or faults in earlier editions.English translations, especially ofColomba andCarmen, are numerous.The Chronique de Charles IX. was translated by G. Saintsburyin 1889 with an introduction; and the same writer has also prefixeda much more elaborate essay, containing a review of Mérimée’sentire work, to an American translation. (G. Sa.)