sult of
absurdity and exaggeration. _Colomba_, _Mateo Falcone_, _La Double
Meprise_, _La Venus d'Ille_, _L'Enlevement de la Redoute_, _Lokis_, have
equals, but no superiors either in French prose fiction or in French
prose. Grasp of human character, reserved but masterly description of
scenery, delicate analysis of motive, ability to represent the
supernatural, pathos, grandeur, simple narrative excellence, appear turn
by turn in these wonderful pieces, as they appear hardly anywhere else
except in the author to whom we shall come next. It is noteworthy,
however, that Merimee is a master of the simple style in literature as
Gautier is of the ornate. One cannot be said to be greater than the
other, but between them they exhibit French prose in a perfection which,
since the seventeenth century, it had not possessed.

[Sidenote: Theophile Gautier.]

Theophile Gautier was born considerably later than most of the writers
just mentioned. His birth-year was 1811, and he was a native of Tarbes
in Gascony. His education was partly at the grammar school of that town,
and partly at the Lycee Charlemagne, where he made friends with Gerard
de Nerval, who was destined to have a great influence on his life.
After leaving school he was intended for the profession of art. But,
like Thackeray, to whom he had many points of resemblance, he had much
less artistic faculty than taste. Gerard introduced him to the circle of
Victor Hugo, and he speedily became one of the most fervent disciples of
the author of _Hernani_. In a red waistcoat which has become historic,
and in a mass of long hair which he continued to wear through life, he
was the foremost of the Hugonic _claque_ at the representation of that
famous play. Young as he was, he soon justified himself as something
more than a hanger-on of great men of letters. In 1830 itself he
produced a volume of verse, and this was followed by _Albertus_, an
audacious poem in the extremest Romantic style, and by a work which did
him both harm and good, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. In this the most
remarkable qualities of style and artistic conception were accompanied
by a wilful disregard of the proprieties. Before long his unusual
command of style, which was partly natural, partly founded on a wide and
accurate study of the French writers of the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, recommended him to newspaper work, at which he
toiled manfully for the remainder of his life. There was hardly a