M. de Balzac père, his wife, his daughter, | and his son Honoré, are discovered seated in their drawing-room. The father is walking up and down the room in an agitated manner, the ladies are executing some fancy work of the period, and the son is turning over the leaves of a book, and wishing he was not clerk to a notary. M. de Balzac père pauses in his promenade, and asks his son abruptly, what profession he intends definitively to adopt. M. de Balzac fils replies, that he wishes to become an author (a laugh). The scene ends with the exit of M. de Balzac fils, who hires the traditional garret of authorship at No. 7, Rue de Lesdiguières, close to the library of the Arsenal, and writes a tragedy. This tragedy-the inevitable prelude to almost all literary labors-is read to the Balzac family, and submitted by its chief to M. Andrieux. M. Andrieuz declares that the author is incapable even of attaining mediocrity, and Honoré de Balzac is looked upon as a sublieutenant named Napoleon was looked upon at Valence, when a lady refused her consent to his marriage with her daughter, because the young artillery officer appeared to have no chance of getting on in the world! The Rue des Les diguières appears to have been to Balzac what the Rue de Cluny was to the aforesaid Raphael, when he lived on a franc a day, and concealed his fivefranc pieces for the opposite reason to that which makes the miser hide his treasures, and lest he should be tempted to change one of them before its time. This," says M. Baschet, was the solitary period of his existence. He saw no one, made long walks, studied the quarter, worked much, and ate little." In 1822, M. de Balzac commenced his practical studies as a novelist, and produced in the course of four years some thirty or forty volumes, signed Horace Saint Aubin, Viellerglé, and Lord R'hoone (an anagram of Honoré). These productions, which were looked upon by Balzac as mere exercises, were written in collaboration with two or more writers, who have preserved their original obscurity. The first work was sold for 200 francs, the second for 400, the third for 800, and the fourth for 1200, the payments being made in bills. About this period, Balzac must have been attacked by the severe illness, the recovery from which he ascribes, in the dedication of the " Lys dans la Vallée," to the care and skill of Dr. Nacquart. "I studied seven years," said M. de Balzac to M. Champfleury, "before learning what the French language really was. When quite young I had an illness, of which nineteen persons out of twenty die. I was cured, and commenced writing the whole of the day. I wrote seven novels, simply as exercises. One to learn dialogue, one for description, one for the grouping of the characters, one for the composition, &c. I wrote them in collaboration; some of them, however, are entirely my own, I do not know which. I do not recognize them." M. de Balzac said, that after these studies and these bad novels, he began to disbelieve in the French language so little known in France." In 1826, M. de Balzac went into partnership with a M. Barbier, as a printer. A onevolume edition of La Fontaine, and another of Molière, had been previously brought out by him, and it was in hopes of regaining the fifteen thousand francs which he borrowed and lost in the speculation, that he started the printing-office. The printing-office turning out a failure, Balzac resolved to get back from the publishers and printers the money which he had lost by printing and publishing; and in 1827, produced the "Dernier Chouan," the first book to which he affixed his real name; and the only contribution towards the twenty-two works which were to have composed the "Scènes de la Vie Militaire." The "Dernier Chouan" is written in imitation of Walter Scott, and many of the remarks which D'Arthez makes to Lucien de Rubempré, à propos of his Archer de Charles IX.," upon which his reputation at Paris is to depend (vide "Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris "), may be applied to it. In 1829, M. de Girardin, who was then editor of the " Mode," inserted in that periodical a tale by M. de Balzac, entitled “El Verdugo." This is a story of a Spanish noble family, which is concerned in a treacherous plot to massacre a French garrison. The whole family is sentenced to death, but the life of the heir to the title is at length spared, upon condition that he will do the office of executioner upon the remaining members, which he is ultimately forced to do by the peremptory command of his father. Although the tale exhibits great narrative power, the general effect of it is one of unmitigated horror, and it certainly belongs to Horace Saint Aubin rather than to Honoré de Balzac. In 1830, Balzac published the "Physiology of Marriage," (Physiologie du Mariage, ou Meditations de philosophie éclectique sur le bonheur et le malheur conjugal, publiée par un jeune célibitaire.) This work met with the greatest success, and the authorship (for it was published anonymously) was variously attributed to an old man of fashion grown | cynical, an old roué of a physician, and other sexagenarians. No one could believe that it had been written by a man of thirty, until the man of thirty, in consequence of repeated misrepresentations as to the authorship and the habits and character of the author, felt it necessary to come forward and avow himself. The only work we can compare the "Philosophy of Marriage" with is the "Marriage Bed," by Defoe, to which, as regards the division of the subject, and in some other particulars, it bears a considerable resemblance. Defoe has treated his subject much too coarsely for his book to be considered readable in the present day; but the objection to Balzac's work relates not so much to impropriety in the details, as to the grave, scientific manner in which he affects to regard the most trivial matters connected with husbands and wives, and to the tone of irony which pervades his entire work, and which, for those who understand him, constitutes its greatest charm. M. Jules Janin, the author of the "Ane Mort," and other unpopular atrocities which seem to have been written by a bewildered butcher, with a skewer dipped in blood, declared that the "Physiology" was "infernal." Numerous journalists of virtue misquotd Balzac, in order to prove that he disbelieved in the existence of a single virtuous woman; and our own "Quarterly Review" denounced him as a writer, who, amongst other things, "referred us to Rousseau as the standard and text-book of public morals." The passage in which Balzac refers to Rousseau is as follows: "Ouvrez Rousseau, car il ne s'agira d'aucune-question de morale publique dont il n'ait d'avance indiqué la PORTEE. To render the word portée by either "standard" or "text-book," is certainly a "free" translation. The fact is, Balzac had a far more elevated notion of virtue than those who have attacked him. He knew how to distinguish between virtue and "the homage which vice pays to virtue," and, admiring it profoundly, found it, like all things worthy of profound admiration, exceedingly A virtuous woman," says the author of the "Physiology," "has in her heart a fibre more or less than other women; she is stupid or sublime." Indeed, it is not the wives, but the husbands, against whom the book in question is directed. "The faults of the wives are so many acts of accusation rare. "6 VOL. XXX. NO. I.. against the egotism, heedlessness, and worth- tend that it is impossible to love the same In the preface to the first edition of the "Peau de Chagrin," Balzac states, that in the "Physiology" he had made an attempt to revive the literature of the eighteenth century. This preface has been suppressed in the subsequent editions, but the author declares in it (as far as we can remember his words), that "unless we return to the literature of our ancestors, a deluge of barbarians, and the burning of our libraries, are the only things which can save us, and enable us to recommence the eternal circle in which the human mind appears to go round." He then explains that the public had declared itself unable to sympathize any longer with the heroes and heroines of consumption, and that it was beginning to feel the bad effects of the literature of blood, fire and rapine, so flourishing immediately before the appearance of the "Peau de Chagrin," which was written with the avowed purpose of anatomizing and exposing French society as it existed immediately after the Revolution of 1830. "Your mean costumes, your unsuccessful revolutions, your shop-keeping politicians, your religion dead, your powers paralyzed, your kings on half-pay-are these so fine," he asks, "that you would have them transfigured? No," he continues, "I can only laugh at you (il n'y a qu'à se moquer); that is the only literature possible in an expiring state of society." The "Peau de Chagrin," contained the most brilliant descriptions which its author had yet produced, as the "Physiology" exhibited some of his best analytical writing. The conversation at the banquet, where artists, writers, musicians, bankers, doctors, are all talking together about the most opposite subjects, is represented with consummate art, and in a manner perfectly novel. Balzac did not exhibit the profound knowledge of human life which has since distin 3 guished him, until 1883, between which year and 1835 he published the "Médecin de Campagne," "Eugénie Grandet," and the "Père Goriot." The "Pèau de Chagrin," powerfully and brilliantly as it is written, must be looked upon as belonging to Balzac's "second manner," and as decidedly wanting in character when compared with the three master-pieces which we have just mentioned. The author was thirty-five when "Euge nie Grandet," and the Scenes de la vie de Province," first appeared-the age of Goldsmith when he published the "Vicar of Wakefield," and of Fielding when he published "Joseph Andrews." He was twentyfive years younger than Richardson when he wrote "Clarissa;" twelve years yonger than Rousseau when he brought out the "Nouvelle Heloise:" and nearly the age of Thackeray when he produced "Vanity Fair." It was fashionable for some time with critics to speak of "Eugenie Grandet," as Balzac's chef d'œuvre, as if he had only written one; and many years afterwards the author complained in a preface that an attempt had been made to disparage his other works by bestowing an inordinate amount of praise upon the one in question, which, nevertheless, he said (and with evident delight), the critics had been unable to force upon the public (!) whereas, the "Médecin de Campagne" had reached a fourth edition. The well-known comparison of Balzac to the Dutch painters is only just so far as regards the truthfulness. with which he has depicted interiors, and the habits of some homely characters; it is unjust so far as regards his exquisite female characters, (how very Dutch the Femme de trente ans, Lady Brandon, Esther, Pauline, Foedora, and Honorine!) and is stupidly untrue with respect to his landscapes of Touraine, and the sad poetry of the final scene in the "Lys dans la Vallee." If we except the three heads of criticism, Gustave Planche, Philarète Chasles, and Sainte Beuve, Balzac may be said to have had all the reviewers of France against him. He retaliated with Lousteau the feuilletoniste, the "Muse du Départment," and the "Grand Homme de Province à Paris." We remember in London, the frenzy with which the inferior weekly newspapers received the chapters of " Pendennis," in which certain striking features and very probable characters connected with the English press were portrayed; but the effect of the terribly exact picture of literary life in Paris which the "Grand Homme de Province à Paris" contained, was such as to make every journalist turn his pen into a stiletto, in order to convince Balzac of the truly Dutch nature of his brilliant and poetical genius. The principal characteristic of Balzac's novels is, nevertheless, their reality. They differ from the French novels which preceded them, not only in the truthfulness of the characters, but also in the simple and natural motives of the intrigue which, of course, has its origin in the hearts of the characters. In Balzac's novels, love-a comparatively unimportant affair in modern society-was no longer recognized as the one sole dramatic agent, and a sweeping reform was effected in the terrible last chapter, when the good used to be gathered together and respectably married, while the bad were cast out into single-lived perdition. Balzac's object was to do for the nineteenth century that which Rétif de la Bretonne had announced his intention of doing for the eighteenth, under the title of "Monuments du Costume physique et moral de la fin du 18me siècle." This Rétif-who wrote one novel on the subject of his separation from his wife, and another on the occasion of his daughter's marrying without his consent (he called this "sacrificing himself to the good of his fellowcitizens")--never carried out his promise with respect to the 18th century in general, and we are not aware that he even had the honor of suggesting the "Comédie Humaine" to Balzac. The "Comédie Humaine" contains pictures of every kind of society existing in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, whether literary, political, commercial, military, ecclesiastical, or rural. Of the different scènes into which the work is divided, the "Scènes de la vie de Province" exhibit most sentiment; the "Scènes de la vie Parisienne" most brilliancy; and "Les Paysans" in the "Scènes de la vie de Campagne," a rugged truthfulness which had never before been shown in France in connection with the peasant, who, according to Boucher, Florian, and others, drove with a crook of barleysugar his milk-white lambs, decorated with ribbons of azure. Balzac, in spite of the animosity of the press, was always admired by the greatest men of the day; and in the dedications of various volumes of the "Comédie Humaine," he has recorded his friendship for Nodier, Lamartine, Théophile Gauthier, Heine, George Sand, Delacroix, Rossini, and Victor Hugo. With regard to works not included in the " Comédie Humaine," we will only call at tention to the "Enfant Maudit," an exquisite tale of the 15th century, the details of which are a sufficient reply to those ignorant persons who fancy that Balzac could only draw the society and scenes by which he was surrounded. As for the inferiority of his plays to his novels, we attribute their want of success to his having cultivated description at the expense of dialogue, which he never employs for the sake of telling a story: and the actual scenery, costumes, and properties of the theatre must, of course, have been common-place, compared to what they would have been in a novel by Balzac. selle Rogron, calls forth more sympathy than It is Balzac's forte to illustrate his characters by the accumulation of a number of little incidents, each of which adds something to the inviduality of the personages: On the other hand, Balzac has been accusso that, although in the first instance we re- ed of giving an unnatural degree of imporcognize them from the author's description tance to details, of recording trivialities, of of their personal appearance, their habits, describing interiors with the precision of an the scenes by which they are surrounded, appraiser, of tiring the reader by histories of even their parentage, and the manner in the ancestors (and even of the heraldic bearwhich they have been educated, we are at ings and quarterings of the ancestors) of some last rendered perfectly familiar and even in- of his characters, of indulging in disquisitions timate with them, by hearing the words on the manners of the inhabitants, natural and placed in their mouths, and witnessing their mineral productions, morality, state of trade, every-day actions. He never proceeds in &c., of the places in which he lays his scenes. any other manner with those characters To which it may be replied, that the arrangewhich he has most carefully drawn: Felix ment or disarrangement of the furniture of a and Monsieur and Madame de Mortsauf, in room sometimes expresses the character of the "Lys dans la Vallée;" the Chevalier de the owner more clearly than his or her own Valois in the "Vieille Fille;" Ursule Mirouet, physiognomy would do; and that a child the charming young girl who has been adopt- brought up in an old castle would differ from ed by an old doctor, and educated by an old another child who had always lived in a priest; Despleins, whom anatomy and analy- modern fashionable mansion, while neither of is have rendered skeptical, but who founds them would entirely resemble a third child a mass for the soul of the pious Auvergnat who had been continually shut up in a puriwho assisted him when he was a penniless tanical parlor of the Richardsonian pattern, student; Mademoiselle Rogron, the vulgar although all three might originally have posand jealous old maid, who persecutes little sessed almost identical dispositions; that an Pierrette to death under pretence of be- inventory may in itself be both comic and having like an aunt; all the Grandet family poetical (as Balzac's annotated catalogue of and all the Claes family are produced, en- the objects in the celebrated curiosity-shop tirely or in part, by the method in question. of the "Peau de Chagrin" sufficiently proves), In consequence of the number of petty inci- and that, in certain cases (as in the last scene dents introduced with great effect by Balzac of the first part of " Ursule Mirouet," in which throughout most of his novels, it has been a young man enters the room where his fasaid of him, as it has been said of Richard- ther died, for the first time since his death); son, Defoe, and other writers who delighted the said "inventory" is as unavoidable as the in details, that "he knew how to invest the presence of scenery on the stage in a modern most ordinary occurrences with interest"- drama. With regard to the long family histhe fact being that the occurrences in ques-tories which are occasionally introduced, they tion have neither more nor less interest than they can derive from the characters of the persons to whom they are represented as happening. Pierrette, striking her head against the side of the door after she has been sent prematurely to bed by Mademoi are frequently necessary, in order to prepare the reader for one of those events of which the explanation might appear unnatural if offered after the occurrence, although it may be simple enough as contained in the introduction to the story. Sometimes, too, these in troductions serve to give probability to a cha- | tial than Defoe, and more minute than Richracter which, although true in natrue, is not ardson. In fact, critics can no more lay down of a kind met with every day. "The charac-general rules which are not liable to be upters of a novel," says Balzac, "must be more set at any moment by the appearance of a logical than those of history. The latter want man of genius, than politicians can establish to have life given them-the former have liv- a constitution which does not in itself contain ed. The existence of these requires no proof, the elements of a revolution. To complain however unnatural their actions may appear; of Balzac's details, which formed part of his while the existence of the others must be sup- system, is to object to his existence as a novelported by unanimous consent." The strange ist. It has often been asked why "Clarissa character of the husband of the provincial Harlowe" was written in letters, and Richardblue-stocking, in the "Muse du Départment," son has replied that he wrote it in letters, has been accounted for in an introduction of perhaps because he had previously written a such length, that those who are not aware of novel in letters, which had proved a success; the utility of all Balzac's details, might be perhaps because he was not able to write tempted to skip it. narrative; and probably, because the mode which he had chosen suited him better than any other. Those who are not satisfied with Richardson's explanation resemble the critic in Balzac's "Grand Homme de Province à Paris." Lucien is astonished at the rapidity with which the critic has disposed of a book of travels in Egypt. "I have discovered eleven faults of French in it," says the feuilletoniste, "and I shall tell the author, that, although he can read hieroglyphics, he can't The system of details, moreover, gives great reality to the characters. "I was born in the year 1632," says an old friend, "in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was call-write his own language. After that, I shall say, ed Robinson Kreuznaer, but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called-nay, we call ourselves, and write our name, Crusoe, and so my companions always called me." It is of course impossible to disbelieve in the existence of a man who tells you where his father and mother lived, and that his real name was. Kreuznaer, although "by the usual corruption of words in EngLand he is called Crusoe !" Many French critics have affected to look upon the detailing and realizing system of Balzac as significant of the decay of art in France, (the decay of an art which, before Balzac wrote, did not exist there!) They will tell you, that the great harvest having been made, the detail school is composed only of gleaners, and that the statue is disappearing before the daguerreotype. Realism is confounded with materialism by writers who have never been able to distinguish between classicism and conventionalism, and is represented as being the art of copying external nature with correctness, when analysis of human character and motives, and the observation of mental phenomena, form the very foundation of the system. It is not even true, however, that the novel descends to details of character and incident in proportion as it gets older, or Thackeray, the representative of the English novel in the present day, would be more circumstan that instead of troubling himself about Egyptian art, he should have devoted his attention to the question of trade, and shall end with a flourish about the Levant, and the commerce of France." "And if he had devoted himself to the commercial question?" inquires Lucien. "Then," replies the feuilletoniste, "I should have told him that he had better have occupied himself with art." Balzac's description in detail of Madame de Mortsauf's voice has been often quoted as an instance of the abuse of the system; "Sa façon de dire les terminaisons en i faisait croire à quelque chant d'oiseau, le ch prononcé par elle était comme une caresse, et la manière dont elle attaquait les t accusait le despotisme du cœur. Elle étendait ainsi sans le savoir le sens des mots, et vous entrainait l'âme dans un monde immense." It appears to us that this description of certain sounds of the voice has the singular merit of suggesting the voice itself. An "idealist," or "classicist," could only have qualified Madame de Mortsauf's voice as "silvery," "liquid," or by some other adjective which may be applied to a thousand different voices; but Balzac, mentioning the sounds which were especially beautiful in her utterance, gives as clear a notion of her mode of speaking, as a description of the airs she was in the habit of executing, and of the notes which she possessed in greatest perfection, |