As historian and archaeologist, as a man of erudition turned artist, he is well seen in the Chronique du Règne de Charles IX., by which we pass naturally from Mérimée's critical or scientific work to the products of his imagination.
What economy in the use of a large antiquarian knowledge! what an instinct amid a hundred details, for the detail that carries physiognomy in it, that really tells!
And again what outline, what absolute clarity of outline!
For the historian of that puzzling age which centres in the "Eve of Saint Bartholomew," outward events themselves seem obscured by the vagueness of motive of the actors in them.
But Mérimée, disposing of them as an artist, not in love with half-lights, compels events and actors alike to the clearness he desired; takes his side without hesitation; and makes his hero a Huguenot of pure blood, allowing its charm, in that charming youth, even to Huguenot piety.
And as for the incidents--however freely it may be undermined by historic doubt, all reaches a perfectly firm surface, at least for the eye of the reader.
The Chronicle of Charles the Ninth is like a series of masterly drawings in illustration of a period--the period in which two other masters of French fiction have found their opportunity, mainly by the development of its actual historic characters.
Those characters--Catherine de Medicis and the rest--Mérimée, with significant irony and self-assertion, sets aside, preferring to think of them as essentially commonplace.
For him the interest lies in the creatures of his own will, who carry in them, however, so lightly! a learning equal to Balzac's, greater than that of Dumas.
He knows with like completeness the mere fashions of the time--how courtier and soldier dressed themselves, and the large movements of the desperate game which fate or chance was playing with those pretty pieces.
Comparing that favourite century of the French Renaissance with our own, he notes a decadence of the more energetic passions in the interest of general tranquillity, and perhaps (only perhaps!) of general happiness.
"Assassination," he observes, as if with regret, "is no longer a part of our manners."
In fact, the duel, and the whole morality of the duel, which does but enforce a certain regularity on assassination, what has been well called le sentiment du fer, the sentiment of deadly steel, had then the disposition of refined existence.
It was, indeed, very different, and is, in Mérimée's romance.
In his gallant hero, Bernard de Mergy, all the promptings of the lad's virile goodness are in natural collusion with that sentiment du fer.
Amid his ingenuous blushes, his prayers, and plentiful tears between-while, it is a part of his very sex.
With his delightful, fresh-blown air, he is for ever tossing the sheath from the sword, but always as if into b
What economy in the use of a large antiquarian knowledge! what an instinct amid a hundred details, for the detail that carries physiognomy in it, that really tells!
And again what outline, what absolute clarity of outline!
For the historian of that puzzling age which centres in the "Eve of Saint Bartholomew," outward events themselves seem obscured by the vagueness of motive of the actors in them.
But Mérimée, disposing of them as an artist, not in love with half-lights, compels events and actors alike to the clearness he desired; takes his side without hesitation; and makes his hero a Huguenot of pure blood, allowing its charm, in that charming youth, even to Huguenot piety.
And as for the incidents--however freely it may be undermined by historic doubt, all reaches a perfectly firm surface, at least for the eye of the reader.
The Chronicle of Charles the Ninth is like a series of masterly drawings in illustration of a period--the period in which two other masters of French fiction have found their opportunity, mainly by the development of its actual historic characters.
Those characters--Catherine de Medicis and the rest--Mérimée, with significant irony and self-assertion, sets aside, preferring to think of them as essentially commonplace.
For him the interest lies in the creatures of his own will, who carry in them, however, so lightly! a learning equal to Balzac's, greater than that of Dumas.
He knows with like completeness the mere fashions of the time--how courtier and soldier dressed themselves, and the large movements of the desperate game which fate or chance was playing with those pretty pieces.
Comparing that favourite century of the French Renaissance with our own, he notes a decadence of the more energetic passions in the interest of general tranquillity, and perhaps (only perhaps!) of general happiness.
"Assassination," he observes, as if with regret, "is no longer a part of our manners."
In fact, the duel, and the whole morality of the duel, which does but enforce a certain regularity on assassination, what has been well called le sentiment du fer, the sentiment of deadly steel, had then the disposition of refined existence.
It was, indeed, very different, and is, in Mérimée's romance.
In his gallant hero, Bernard de Mergy, all the promptings of the lad's virile goodness are in natural collusion with that sentiment du fer.
Amid his ingenuous blushes, his prayers, and plentiful tears between-while, it is a part of his very sex.
With his delightful, fresh-blown air, he is for ever tossing the sheath from the sword, but always as if into b