tion, the subtleties of
human intercourse. He probably never read Jane Austen; but if he had he
certainly would have considered her an utterly pointless writer; and he
would have been altogether at sea in a novel by Henry James. The elusive
things that are so important, the indecisive things that are so curious,
the intimate things that are so thrilling--all these slipped through his
rough, matter-of-fact grasp. His treatment of the relations between the
sexes is characteristic. The subject fills a great place in his novels;
he approaches it with an unflinching boldness, and a most penetrating
gaze; yet he never succeeds in giving a really satisfactory presentment
of the highest of those relations--love. That eluded him: its essence
was too subtle, too private, too transcendental. No one can describe
love who has not the makings of a poet in him. And a poet was the very
last thing that Balzac was.

But his work does not merely suffer from the absence of certain good
qualities; it is also marred by the presence of positively bad ones.
Balzac was not simply a realist. There was a romantic vein in him, which
occasionally came to the surface with unfortunate results. When that
happened, he plunged into the most reckless melodrama, revelled in the
sickliest sentiment, or evolved the most grotesque characters, the most
fantastic plots. And these lapses occur quite indiscriminately. Side by
side with some detailed and convincing description, one comes upon
glaring absurdities; in the middle of some narrative of extraordinary
actuality, one finds oneself among hissing villains, disguises, poisons,
and all the paraphernalia of a penny novelette. Balzac's lack of
critical insight into his own work is one of the most singular of his
characteristics. He hardly seems to have known at all what he was about.
He wrote feverishly, desperately, under the impulsion of irresistible
genius. His conceptions crowded upon him in vivid, serried
multitudes--the wildest visions of fantasy mixed pell-mell with the most
vital realizations of fact. It was not for him to distinguish; his
concern was simply, somehow or other, to get them all out: good, bad, or
indifferent, what did it matter? The things were in his brain; and they
must be expressed.

Fortunately, it is very easy for the reader to be more discriminating
than Balzac. The alloy is not inextricably mingled with the pure
metal--the chaff may be winnowed off, and the grain left. His errors