The Human Comedy: Introductions and Appendix | Page 8

/Les Chouans/, called at its first issue, which differed
considerably from the present form, /Le Dernier Chouan ou la Bretagne
en 1800/ (later /1799/). It was published in 1829 without any of the
previous anagrammatic pseudonyms; and whatever were the reasons
which had induced him to make his bow in person to the public, they
were well justified, for the book was a distinct success, if not a great
one. It occupies a kind of middle position between the melodramatic
romance of his nonage and the strictly analytic romance-novel of his
later time; and, though dealing with war and love chiefly, inclines in
conception distinctly to the latter. Corentin, Hulot, and other
personages of the actual Comedy (then by no means planned, or at least
avowed) appear; and though the influence of Scott is in a way
paramount* on the surface, the underwork is quite different, and the
whole scheme of the loves of Montauran and Mademoiselle de
Verneuil is pure Balzac.

* Balzac was throughout his life a fervent admirer of Sir Walter, and I
think Mr. Wedmore, in his passage on the subject, distinctly
undervalues both the character and the duration of this esteem. Balzac
was far too acute to commit the common mistake of thinking Scott
superficial--men who know mankind are not often blind to each other's
knowledge. And while Mr. Wedmore seems not to know any testimony
later than Balzac's /thirty-eighth/ year, it is in his /forty-sixth/, when all
his own best work was done, except the /Parents Pauvres/, that he
contrasts Dumas with Scott saying that /on relit Walter Scott/, and he
does not think any one will re-read Dumas. This may be unjust to the
one writer, but it is conclusive as to any sense of "wasted time" (his
own phrase) having ever existed in Balzac's mind about the other.
It would seem as if nothing but this sun of popular approval had been
wanting to make Balzac's genius burst out in full bloom. Although we
have a fair number of letters for the ensuing years, it is not very easy to
make out the exact sequence of production of the marvelous harvest
which his genius gave. It is sufficient to say that in the three years
following 1829 there were actually published the /Physiologie du
Mariage/, the charming story of /La Maison du Chat- que-Pelote/, the
/Peau de Chagrin/, the most original and splendid, if not the most
finished and refined, of all Balzac's books, most of the short /Contes
Philosophiques/, of which some are among their author's greatest
triumphs, many other stories (chiefly included in the /Scenes de la Vie
Privee/) and the beginning of the /Contes Drolatiques/.*
* No regular attempt will after this be made to indicate the date of
production of successive works, unless they connect themselves very
distinctly with incidents in the life or with general critical observations.
At the end of this introduction will be found a full table of the
/Comedie Humaine/ and the other works. It may perhaps be worth
while to add here, that while the labors of M. de Lovenjoul (to whom
every writer on Balzac must acknowledge the deepest obligation) have
cleared this matter up almost to the verge of possibility as regards the
published works, there is little light to be thrown on the constant
references in the letters to books which never appeared. Sometimes
they are known, and they may often be suspected, to have been

absorbed into or incorporated with others; the rest must have been lost
or destroyed, or, which is not quite impossible, have existed chiefly in
the form of project. Nearly a hundred titles of such things are
preserved.
But without a careful examination of his miscellaneous work, which is
very abundant and includes journalism as well as books, it is almost as
impossible to come to a just appreciation of Balzac as it is without
reading the early works and letters. This miscellaneous work is all the
more important because a great deal of it represents the artist at quite
advanced stages of his career, and because all its examples, the earlier
as well as the later, give us abundant insight on him as he was "making
himself." The comparison with the early works of Thackeray (in
/Punch/, /Fraser/, and elsewhere) is so striking that it can escape no one
who knows the two. Every now and then Balzac transferred bodily, or
with slight alterations, passages from these experiments to his finished
canvases. It appears that he had a scheme for codifying his
"Physiologies" (of which the notorious one above mentioned is only a
catchpenny exemplar and very far from the best) into a seriously
organized work. Chance was kind or intention was wise in not allowing
him to do so; but the value of the things