The modern novel-its influence, artistic conditions, relative value in literature, its history and the comparative merit of its most popular authors-have furnished a copious theme to critics and reviewers in England and America. Regarded as the mirror of society, its progress has been casually traced from the salient but unrefined humanity of Fielding, through the artificial sentimentalism of Richardson, and the supernaturalism of Mrs. Radcliffe, and their followers, to the sensible ideal of life unfolded by Miss Austin and Miss Edgeworth, and thence along the magic historical panorama of Scott, until the gallery of satirical photographs by Thackeray, the humane exuberance of Dickens, the fashionable pictures of Mrs. Gore and Bulwer, and the romance of reform in D'Israeli, Reade and Kingsley bring it home to the sympathies and experience of the passing hour. It is somewhat remarkable that while the field of English novel writing has been thus fully discussed, and Manzoni and Goethe have found in our vernacular studious expositors of their classic fictions-so little has been said by literary

oracles here and in Great Britain of the French novel. Doubtless the prominent reason for this neglect may be found in the exceptionable scenes and equivocal morality of the leading novelists of France. Their tone and subjects are so often repugnant to Anglo-Saxon domestic purity, the proprieties of life and the laws of principle and taste are so grossly violated, that it is deemed an error of honest judgment to dilate upon what is only attractive to misguide and pervert. There are two considerations, however, which should modify this avoidance; one is the fact that many of this class of books are free from this grave moral objection, and the other is, that in some of them, the art and even the science of prose narrative and characterization reaches a perfection which makes it an auspicious study and a wonderful phenomenon which it " argues an insensibility" to ignore. On the same principle that the most revolting scenes delineated by Hogarth, the crude saintliness of expression discoverable in Perugino, the lessons in color taught by Rubens and Titian in their most voluptuous figures,

2. Balzac en Pantoufles par Leon Gozlan.

3. Euvres Complètes de H. De Balzac. Italiens. 1857.

VOL. XXVIII-6

Paris: Michel Levy pere.

1856.

Paris: Libraire Nouvelle, 15 Boulevard Des

are all fraught with invaluable precedents and suggestion to the artist intent upon acquiring the mastery of all the elements of his vocation,-the best wrought specimens of French story challenge attention; the method is sometimes so original and thorough that in spite of the depravity of the moral, the artist to whom all things should be pure, may derive new insight as to the application of his own skill to a less questionable conception; and, more than this, it happens not infrequently that the French author, who is prohibited by the strict canons of English and American standards, in certain instances, works himself clear of the taint and creates a triumph of art without offence to decency or conscience. It will scarcely be disputed that of our native writers of fiction who have attained a recognized position in literature, the one who most effectively combines power in characterization, verisimilitude in scenes and atmosphere and high artistic finish, is Nathaniel Hawthorne. Cooper excelled him in graphic pictures of the forest and the sen; Judd caught as faithfully some of the primitive features of New England life, but in style and concentration of material, he excels them both; Brockden Brown's instinct for the supernatural was akin to Hawthorne's, but his use thereof is comparatively what the hasty sketch is to the elaborate picture. The "Scarlet Letter" and the "House of the Seven Gables" are finished specimens of historical, local and individual story wherein the back-ground, the dramatis persona, the grouping, the light and shade, the latent significance and the most minute detail, are all moulded, combined and illustrated with patient, clear and vigorous skill. And it is a sufficient justification of our purpose to analyse and set forth the transcendant ability displayed by the most gifted French novelist of the age, that the process and principle of his work, that which gives it force and originality is analagous to that of our own foremost writer in the same department. Disclaiming, then,

at the outset, any intention of defending his moral obliquities, or advocating his subject as always fit or even tolerable, we proceed to consider him as a scientific analyst of life and artistic

raconteur.

Honoré de Balzac, (so called from St. Honoré, on whose féte day he was born, at Tours, May 20th, 1799,) died at Paris August 20th, 1850. One of his countrymen has thus frankly stated his anomalous position in the world of letters: "He commands the applause and admiration of a large portion of society, but is viewed with displeasure and disapprobation by the more stern and censorious; this arises, in a great measure, from the multiplicity and diversity of his contributions to the light literature of France; his earliest works, under the name of Horace St. Aubin, are poor and worthless; others are vicious and immoral; proofs can be quoted to justify the highest praise and blame; his diction is pure and beautiful; he is a profound and bold observer of human nature, and has a keen perception of the inmost emotions of the female heart; his power and delicacy of comprehension are extraordinary." Here we have united in the same verdict the most severe condemnation and the most exalted praise; the identical author is represented as reckless and unprincipled, yet Shakesperian in perspicuity and refined to elegance in style.

This question of morality in the drama. and in fiction is singularly complicated, and no literary problem has occasioned greater injustice. The actual lessons of life, the result of candid observationare recognized as thoroughly moralthat is, as confirming the wisdom and beauty of virtue, and signalizing the misery of vice. If this is so, why should the report thereof, the authentic representation of the facts of society prove otherwise than salubrious? Only by a perversion which glosses over iniquity and makes crime fascinating. When the insight is deep, the analysis thorough, the description true to human nature—

then inevitably the impression is profoundly moral. If the anatomical student shrinks from the lessons of dissection, he can never wisely operate on the living body. Balzac's prevailing and even stern allegiance to the facts and phases of Parisian life is acknowledged; and the artist, critic and scientific explorer so predominate in him that only a morbid imagination can admit conscious evil in his purpose. Whether it is desirable to record and examine, to illustrate and define the side of life and the forms of character which he so thoroughly studied, is another question; but admitting that they should be exhibited, known, considered and understood,-Balzac's method and genius eminently fitted him to be their expositor. It is seldom, too, that he offends by prurient details; it is the relation rather the detailed conduct of his personages in which immorality chiefly lies; and the analysis thereof and final issue almost invariably teaches the right. If he describes elaborately the longues et monotones tragedies conjugales, he also reveals satiety―cet horrible denouement du concubinage. There is indeed a sadness in his pictures-a sadness which seizes on the fancy and makes heavy the heart-but it is more philosophical than cynical, and has a contemplative zest more healthful than the bitter, hard and hopeless inference of the English satirical novelist. No weak mind should commune with Balzac; he does not furnish such wholesome recreation to the masses as Scott or Dickens; yet the man of sentiment and of knowledge, the student of human nature, the philosophic observer of life in all its varieties, contrasts and phenomena, is none the less indebted to him for acute generalizations, exquisite delineations of inward experience, and full and significant photographs of the art, economy, local features and emotional secrets of French existence. To do justice to his genius we must regard it in its highest moods and its most pure creations; we must estimate Balzac as a philosopher and an artist, and with a protest against the unworthy use, contemplate the exercise of his powers in the abstract.

To depict character and life so as to give the tableaux a scientific as well as dramatic interest, besides keen observation and adequate power of language, there is need of that faculty which phrenologists call concentrativeness; and the union of these three requisites is as rare as their separate possession is comparatively frequent. Their combination in a high and harmonious degree is the characteristic of Balzac. His earliest developement indicates how native was this distinction; for he was not only disposed to reverie like all imaginative children, alive to fine impressions like all sensitive organizations, but even at the very dawn of conscious being, inclined to the abstract in mood, to the reflective in books, and, at the same time, he was indifferent to ordinary experience, averse to sports and retentive of ideas. This philosophic instinct usually the trait of maturity was fully manifest in his very boyhood; his alienation from the immediate, his partial recognition of the familiar amused the household; it foreshadowed the introspective habit whereby he afterwards seized upon the latent in human life and the inward springs of motive and feeling. A suggestive name, an important date, a salient truth or a pregnant idea clung to his memory; yet living in the midst of rural objects, he long cherished a peach blossom as an aloe flower, and could not distinguish vine leaves from grain stalks; his favorite reading was religious and philosophic; and he was obliged to leave college on account of a cerebral apathy brought on by this premature exercise of the reasoning, at the expense of the observant faculties; nature demanded a respite and equilibrium; the brain was in the condition of an athlete, one set of whose muscles has been exclusively strained, and the others left flaccid; the change of life and the release from mental labor, instantly restored the balance; for Balzac's constitution was vigorous and his temperament vivid, but his intellect was of that kind which demands work as a necessity; alone, sequestered with books, the labor might have proved unhealthy and the result morbid, but in

contact with life, in an atmosphere of varied and active human interests, study and reflection alternated genially with sympathy and observation, and thus the removal of his family to Paris in 1813, was auspicious to the ardent and brooding youth. He soon became a busy yet cheerful scholar, was educated at the best schools, attended the lectures of the Sorbonne and the College of France; ever at work, he often smiled, and from his eyes gleamed those intense glances which so mysteriously radiate a light at once spiritual and visual, and assure us of a soul endowed both to see, in the highest meaning of that function, and to reveal;- perception that deals at once with the inward and the outward, and can not only discover the material, but penetrate beneath it to the idea, or sentiment or use, of which it is the type and representative. And while these scintillations from the eyes and this flexile, sweet and expressive play of the lips, would have betrayed to a watchful friend, Balzac's rare affinities with humanity, his strong and well-built, almost sturdy frame, and broad and massive head would have equally satisfied a physiologist that the energy, the will and the physical resources were not wanting to render both his sympathies and his insight effective. Thus in his organization as in his writings there was something Teutonic; the solidity of the German seemed grafted upon the vivacity of the Gallic mind; here was a Frenchman who seemed born to retain and mould impressions as well as to receive them with quickness and accuracy; to the vivacity of his countrymen in seizing on the actual, he joined a power of subjecting the fruit of observation to a calm, searching process of thought; in a word, he could meditate as patiently as he could observe genially, and work out a problem as thoroughly as he could state a proposition clearly. But these abilities were then mainly exhibited as normal tastes, not as creative forces.

It seems inevitable that when quickness and force of mind are exhibited without a decided proclivity for science or theology, a youth is destined by his guar

dians for the law, and equally a matter of course where a poetic tendency exists, that he repudiates or rather struggles with the purpose of his elders. It was thus with Ariosto and Alfieri, and with Cowper and Scott; and it was so with Balzac; he declared himself a votary of literature, and returned to his provincial home; Cromwell was the subject that first attracted him; his career had been a familiar theme in the family, and yielded them a kind of political manual; during this sojourn Balzac read much in the library of the town, mused, studied, built castles in the air; and his favorite pastime was to make new purchases on the Quai des Augustins to enrich his little library. He finally returned to Paris to try the precarious vocation of an author; long and painful was the ordeal; he was poorly lodged; he wrought incessantly; his nervous system was often irritated; he was a martyr to the toothache; yet a cheerful spirit compensated for these evils; he wrote sprightly letters to his sisters; amused himself with his neices, whom he called mes gazelles; and while his eager and searching expression gave him a "wolfish look," his laugh was merry and his will indomitable. The taste of the day in fiction was for rapid, and exciting incident; the staple of romance was adventure; the dramatic scenes of Dumas were in the ascendant; plot was everything, character secondary; and above all the tone in vogue was superficial.

Balzac entered the field with a totally different inspiration; he wrote on the principle of the great artist-making a profound study instead of a brilliant sketch; his interest in his work was psychological, his grasp of a subject scientific; not content with producing effects he aspired to reveal consciousness, to make his readers participate in the essential life and not merely behold the outward experience of his characters. The conception was not less intense than the execution was conscientious; facts of life, phases of emotion, the inward struggle, the normal mood were absolutely unfolded and the circumstances by means of which this process was reveal

ed, bore a relation to the mental picture itself such as a trellis bears to the vinelifting fruit and blossoms to the light, but not superseding or overlaying them. This was an innovation; to follow such a guide a deeper sympathy and a more refined perception were requisite than the narrator of outward events demands; he presupposed an interest in the subtle workings of the heart and the silent operations of the mind, which the emasculated readers of his day could not at once realize; and at the same time, he thus erected a standard, hinted an ideal that, if once recognized, would make the novelist's task as metaphysical as it had previously been picturesque and melodramatic.

Accordingly the experiment was coldly received. The critics failed to perceive what a significance lay in the very attempt to go below the phenomena and delineate the moral experience; the gaze accustomed to the camera-obscura and the kaleidoscope-swiftly moving shadows and dazzling combinations, did not readily adapt itself to a microscopic lens which revealed the elements instead of the panorama of human existence. The talent heretofore available as capital in the world of literary entertainment was pictorial; Balzac boldly ventured to invest in the analytical, which was his speciality and his mission; but he found, like the English poet who went back to nature, after rhetoric had intensified into fever the spirit of the muses, that he must create the taste to which he desired to minister, and, like all original workers, his first service was to "stand and wait." But in order to do even this he must live; and his writings were unproductive. At this crisis, a flattering proposal to edit and publish on mutual account, new editions of Moliere, La Fontaine and other French classics, was made him by a friend; his father liked the business aspect of the enterprise, for he believed in trade, though not in authorship; cash was advanced; a printing office established; a failure ensued; -and yet the individual who bought the concern made a fortune. Au lieu d'abbatre les grandes âmes, le malheur dou

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ble leur energie. Balzac vindicated this truth; other speculations were unfortunate, two periodicals died in his hands; pecuniary success eluded him, but not the instinctive goal of his mind. He continued to write according to the idiosyncrasies through which alone he felt justified in loyalty to literature. His confidence was simply that of a man true to his peculiar gifts, and finding satisfaction therein and a presage of success. He labored with exemplary patience, undiscouraged by the indifference with which his successive publications were regarded; this indifference was partial, not absolute, for individual sympathy of the most genuine kind, though often of anonymous expression, assured him, from the first, that he could strike the key note of human emotion: he distinctly foresaw appreciation, and enjoyed presentiments of renown and fortune. concentrated the aroma of his own experience, drew from the impressions of his own nature; he reflected on emotions and reproduced them; and this was a labor of love. The very method of his toil attests a consciousness of its value; he retired at five in the afternoon, began to work at eleven at night, and often continued until nine, then breakfasted; corrected proofs until nearly noon, then walked, dined and conversed through the afternoon. His proof sheets had enormous margins,--forty pages of ten swelled to an hundred under his socalled corrections; the revisions were so numerous as to be the despair of printers; but the author cheerfully paid them for extra work. In this we see the true spirit of an artist; how it contrasts with Dumas, throwing sheet after sheet on the floor to be gathered up, struck off, sold, read and forgotten! When Balzac came to be understood, his admirers naturally found the best parallels to illustrate his merits among the old masters,-their minute finish, their intensity of expression and their self-absorbing toil. Thus says one: "Balzac est le Benvenuto Cellini de la litterature moderne; il a sculpté ses libres avec un patience admirable." Another compares his still life with Gerard Dow's interiors: and yet another, refer