He sought out types perverted, and types unsullied, “through an inexhaustible curiosity for every variety of the human species,” and thus formed in his memory a gallery of living pictures inestimably more precious than any other kind; for those of books and of edifices are but empty shells, once tenanted, but whose structure may be known only by imagining the forms that dwelt therein, from the poems that have survived. By a sort of divination, keen, accurate, and swift, he made this mental reconstruction. In the _Chronicle of Charles IX_, in _The Experiments of an Adventurer_, and in the _Theater of Clara Gazul_ it is evident that such was his involuntary method. His writings tend naturally to the demi-dreams of the artist, to scenic effect, and to romance which clothes the dead past with new life. With splendid acquirements and talents like these, he might have occupied in the field of history and of art a position of eminent importance and distinction; yet as a historian he has taken but a mediocre place, and as an artist, his rank, while a high one, is of narrow limit. The bent of his mind led Mérimée to be suspicious, and suspicion carried to excess is harmful. To obtain from the study of any subject all that it is able to bestow, one must, I fancy, give oneself to it without reserve, be wedded to it, indeed, but not treat it as a mistress to whom one is devoted for two or three years, only to discard and take a new one. A man produces the best of which he is capable only when, after conceiving to himself some form of art, some method of science, in short some general idea of his subject, he becomes so enamoured that he finds it possessing attractions above all else--himself especially--and worships it as a goddess, whom he is happy only in serving. Mérimée, also, was capable of cherishing this affection and adoration, but after a time the critic within him awoke, bringing the goddess to trial, only to discover that she was not entirely divine. All our methods of science, all our forms of art, all our general ideas, have some weak spot; the inadequate, the uncertain, the expedient, the artificial, abound therein; only the illusion of love can find them perfect, and a sceptic does not remain long in love. He put on his magnifying glasses, and in the enchanting statue discovered a lack of poise, a vagueness and insincerity of construction, a modernity of attitude. Becoming disgusted, he turned away, not without reason, to be sure, and these reasons he explains in passing. He sees in our philosophy of history an element of speculation, in our mania for erudition the futility, inutility; he sees extravagance in our taste for the picturesque, and insipidity in our paintings of realism. Let inventors and simpletons, through vanity or stupidity, accept, if they like, such a system, such a style; but as for himself, he rejects it, or, if he has not rejected, he regrets that he has not done so.