SOURCE: "Prosper Mérimée," in Six Masters in Disillusion, Archibald Constable and Co. Ltd., 1909, pp. 26-55.

In the following excerpt, Thorold evaluates Mérimeé 's literary style.

Mérimée's literary contribution at first sight seems rather the product of the leisure of an accomplished man of the world than that of a professional man of letters. An accomplished man of the world he certainly was, wearing his immense learning with unobtrusive grace, willing to devote his time and erudition to making a success of country-house theatricals, devoted to little girls and cats, between which branches of the animal kingdom he maintained the existence of a mysterious affinity, a delightful companion, attractive as it would seem by a singular dispensation, to men and women and children alike—he was all this, but he was more also. He possessed a very special and individual view of art, which...