is
essentially universal. He sees life from every point of view. He has no
preferences and no prejudices. He does not try to prove anything. He
feels that the spectacle of life contains its own secret. 'II cree un
monde et se tait.'

And what a world it is! What a panorama of passions! What a pell-mell
of men and women! It was said of Trollope that he increased the number
of our acquaintances without adding to our visiting list; but after the
Comedie Humaine one begins to believe that the only real people are the
people who have never existed. Lucien de Rubempre, le Pere Goriot,
Ursule Mirouet, Marguerite Claes, the Baron Hulot, Madame Marneffe, le
Cousin Pons, De Marsay--all bring with them a kind of contagious illusion
of life. They have a fierce vitality about them: their existence is
fervent and fiery-coloured; we not merely feel for them but we see
them--they dominate our fancy and defy scepticism. A steady course of
Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to
the shadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party to
meet Tomkins, the friend of one's boyhood, when one can sit at home with
Lucien de Rubempre? It is pleasanter to have the entree to Balzac's
society than to receive cards from all the duchesses in May fair.

In spite of this, there are many people who have declared the Comedie
Humaine to be indigestible. Perhaps it is: but then what about truffles?
Balzac's publisher refused to be disturbed by any such criticism as that.
'Indigestible, is it?' he exclaimed with what, for a publisher, was rare
good sense. 'Well, I should hope so; who ever thinks of a dinner that
isn't?' And our English publisher, Mr. Routledge, clearly agrees with M.
Poulet-Malassis, as he is occupied in producing a complete translation of
the Comedie Humaine. The two volumes that at present lie before us
contain Cesar Birotteau, that terrible tragedy of finance, and L'lllustre
Gaudissart, the apotheosis of the commercial traveller, the Duchesse de
Langeais, most marvellous of modern love stories, Le Chef d'OEuvre
Inconnu, from which Mr. Henry James took his Madonna of the Future, and
that extraordinary romance Une Passion dans le Desert. The choice of
stories is quite excellent, but the translations are very unequal, and
some of them are positively bad. L'lllustre Gaudissart, for instance, is
full of the most grotesque mistakes, mistakes that would disgrace a
schoolboy. 'Bon