s given
me, and for the patience with which he has elucidated the difficulties
of an inexperienced writer.

MARY F. SANDARS.

HONORE DE BALZAC

CHAPTER I

Balzac's claims to greatness--The difficulty in attempting a
complete Life--His complex character--The intention of this book.

At a time when the so-called Realistic School is in the ascendant
among novelists, it seems strange that little authentic information
should have been published in the English language about the great
French writer, Honore de Balzac. Almost alone among his
contemporaries, he dared to claim the interest of the world for
ordinary men and women solely on the ground of a common humanity. Thus
he was the first to embody in literature the principle of Burns that
"a man's a man for a' that"; and though this fact has now become a
truism, it was a discovery, and an important discovery, when Balzac
wrote. He showed that, because we are ourselves ordinary men and
women, it is really human interest, and not sensational circumstance
which appeals to us, and that material for enthralling drama can be
found in the life of the most commonplace person--of a middle-aged
shopkeeper threatened with bankruptcy, or of an elderly musician with
a weakness for good dinners. At one blow he destroyed the unreal ideal
of the Romantic School, who degraded man by setting up in his place a
fantastic and impossible hero as the only theme worthy of their pen;
and thus he laid the foundation of the modern novel.

His own life is full of interest. He was not a recluse or a bookworm;
his work was to study men, and he lived among men, he fought
strenuously, he enjoyed lustily, he suffered keenly, and he died
prematurely, worn out by the force of his own emotions, and by the
prodigies of labour to which he was impelled by the restless
promptings of his active brain, and by his ever-pressing need for
money. Some of his letters to Madame Hanska have been published during
the last few years; and where can we read a more pathetic love story
than the record of his seventeen years' waiting for her, and of the
tragic ending to his long-deferred happiness? Or where in modern times
can more exciting and often comical tales of adventure be found than
the accounts of his wild and always unsuccessful attempts to become a
millionaire? His friends comprised most of the celebrated French
writers of the day; and