Excerpt from Letters of Prosper Merimee to Panizzi, Vol. 1 It is regrettable that a translation, however perfect, commonly fails to do full justice to the original. The turn of phrase, the delicate finesse of an expression, the elegance, pathos or humour of a sentence, are points difficult to render, and yet there are a great number of zealous students unfamiliar with any but their native tongue - to whom translations are indispensable, as being the only means whereby they can acquire the infer mation of which they are in quest. By way of introduction to this interesting Col lection of Letters, a brief sketch of their author and his life may possibly be acceptable to the reader, and not altogether inappropriate. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.