As Mérimée's fiction was always in a manner the offspring of his researches, as many of his stories, such as _Carmen, La Vénus d'Ille_, and _Lokis_, are even sportively set in a framework of archæological or philological investigation, it was natural enough that science should gradually make its way from the outside to the heart of his work. In his position as a scientific man lies the last great difference between him and Beyle. Mérimée is not a scientist of the first rank; he has the second-class qualities of thoroughness and trustworthiness, but lacks the spark of inspiration which he possesses as an author. He has, however, the distinctive sign of the true man of science; he never speaks of what he does not understand; he never indulges in random conjectures or ingenious paradoxes; he progresses step by step. At times he may be dry and wooden, but he never makes a mistake. If Mérimée is the sober, uninspired man of science, Beyle is the inspired scientific dilettante, with all the signs of genius, but also all the signs of dilettantism. His books teem with daring assertions, indemonstrable conjectures, theories regarding nations with whose languages he was unfamiliar, amateurish paradoxes like that which places Werner's _Luther_ in the forefront of German drama. His essays are as entertaining and suggestive as Mérimée's are tiresome and dry; but Mérimée's conclusions are founded upon rock, Beyle's too often built upon sand. Thus, both as the scientist and the author, Mérimée marks an advance upon Beyle. He is a man of a narrower and less fertile mind; but the contents of his mind are infinitely better ordered, and he is master of a highly perfected artistic style. [1] "Souvent vous ne me semblez pas assez _délicatement tender_; or il faut cela dans un roman pour me toucher." [2] _Lettres à une inconnue_, i. 72. XXIII MÉRIMÉE Mérimée's earliest attitude as the dramatist and novelist is an attitude of literary aggressiveness. Although by nature an observer, he does not, like Balzac, set himself the task of representing, in all its breadth, the world he sees around him; neither is it his ambition that posterity shall study in his works the customs and ideas of his period; he desires to challenge a prevailing taste; and with the object of irritating and rousing his fellow-countrymen, he generally chooses themes which have as little connection as possible with modern civilised society.