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ridicule, and yet his whole attitude may be ridiculous. Such a gentleman was Prosper Merimee. He had the gift of imagination, psychological insight, the artist's shaping hand. His early romantic plays were put forth as those of Clara Gazul, a Spanish _comedienne_. His Illyrian poems, _La Guzla_, were the work of an imaginary Hyacinthe Maglanovich, and Merimee could smile gently at the credulity of a learned public. He took up the short story where Xavier de Maistre, who had known how to be both pathetic and amiably humorous, and Charles Nodier, who had given play to a graceful fantasy, left it. He purged it of sentiment, he reduced fantasy to the law of the imagination, and produced such works as _Carmen_ and _Colomba_, each one a little masterpiece of psychological truth, of temperate local colour, of faultless narrative, of pure objective art. The public must not suppose that he cares for his characters or what befell them; he is an archaeologist, a savant, and only by accident a teller of tales. Merimee had more sensibility than he would confess; it shows itself for moments in the posthumous _Lettres a une Inconnue_; but he has always a bearing-rein of ironical pessimism to hold his sensibility in check. The egoism of the romantic school appears in Merimee inverted; it is the egoism not of effusion but of disdainful reserve.[1] [Footnote 1: It is one of Merimee's merits that he awakened in France an interest in Russian literature.] CHAPTER V HISTORY--LITERARY CRITICISM I The progress of historical literature in the nineteenth century was aided by the change which had taken place in philosophical opinion; instead of a rigid system of abstract ideas, which disdained the thought of past ages as superstition, had come an eclecticism guided by spiritual beliefs. The religions of various lands and various ages were viewed with sympathetic interest; the breach of continuity from mediaeval to modern times was repaired; the revolutionary spirit of individualism gave way before a broader concern for society; the temper in politics grew more cautious and less dogmatic; the great events of recent years engendered historical reflection; literary art was renewed by the awakening of the romantic imagination. The historical learning of the Empire is represented by Daunou, an explorer in French literature; by Ginguene, the literary historian of Italy; by Michaud, who devoted his best years to a _History of th
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