re "fine-writing" of no very fine
kind. The close of _Peau de Chagrin_ and _Seraphita_ contain about the
best passages.

[170] The two next paragraphs are, by the kind permission of the Editor
and Publisher of the _Quarterly Review_, reprinted, with some slight
alterations, from the article above referred to.

[171] I have known this denied by persons of authority, who would exalt
the gift of conversation even above the pure narrative faculty. I should
admit the latter was commoner, but hardly that it was inferior.

[172] I believe I may speak without rashness thus, for a copy of the
sixteen-volume (was it not?) edition was a cherished possession of mine
for years, and I even translated a certain amount for my own
amusement--especially _Die unsichtbare Loge_.

[173] I have said nothing here on a point of considerable interest to
myself--the question whether Balzac can be said ever (or at least often)
to have drawn a gentleman or a lady. It would require too much
"justification" by analysis of particular characters. And this would
pass into a more general enquiry whether these two species exist in the
Balzacium Sidus itself. Which things open long vistas. (_V. inf._ on
Charles de Bernard.)

CHAPTER V

GEORGE SAND

[Sidenote: George Sand--generalities about her.]

There is a Scotch proverb (not, I think, among those most generally
known), "Never tell your foe when your foot sleeps"; and some have held
that this applies specially to the revelation, by an author, of his own
weak points. I do not agree with them, having always had a fancy for
playing and seeing cards on table--except at cards themselves, where a
dummy seems to me only to spoil the game. Therefore I admit, in coming
to George Sand, that this famous novelist has not, _as_ a novelist, ever
been a favourite of mine--that I have generally experienced some, and
occasionally great, difficulty in reading her. Even the "purged
considerate mind" (without, I venture to hope, much dulling of the
literary palate) which I have brought to the last readings necessary for
this book, has but partially removed this difficulty. The causes of it,
and their soundness or unsoundness as reasons, must be postponed for a
little--till, as usual, sufficient survey and analysis of at least
specimens (for here as elsewhere the immense bulk of the total work
defies anything more than "sampling") have supplied due evidence. But it
may be said at once that no kind of preju