Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/42

tainly had not the dramatic, at least the theatrical, genius proper. Unlike almost all other men of letters, he never made the least attempt upon the boards and the only thing of his that was ever brought there, the Carrosse du Saint Sacrement, was staged against his will, and justified his objections by failing as a play, though it is one of the most charming of stories par personnages. La Guzla, on the other hand, gives itself out as a translation of poetry; and affects the extremest poetic liberties of diction and of composition. And Mérimée, like Beyle, though perhaps not to the same extent, affected to care little, and did not probably care very much, for the form of verse. Yet both books have the most admirable literary quality—a quality so admirable as to make one heartily sorry that they are much more often spoken of as mere hoaxes than as anything else. To anyone who judges literature by what it is, and not by something else, the existence or non-existence of Hyacinthe Maglanovitch is a matter of absolute indifference. It is sufficient that the pieces which their creator chose to label with his name, whether they are Illyrian or not, whether they are Hyacinthian or not, are admirable folk-verse stuff, and much better than most originals. Some of them (for instance the opening one