The age-herald., 1897-09-12

eouraging and dlshearteniHg forces. During his early life of probation in the city of Paris what work he meditatesi Novels, comedies. comic operas trage- dies are all upon his list of things to be done. He chose the tragedy of Crom- we'll for his opening work, and with the crushing defeat or failure hear him heroically exclaim, tragedies are not in my line, that's all" After this, at his mothers home in the country, in the space of five years, he wrote more than ten novels in forty volumes, which he considered mere attempts at his art and very imperfect ones; so that they have never been acknowledged.
 Les Chouans was the first work to which he attached his own name and this work chanced to become the turning point ir his literary carser; he now swift ly became famous and publishers sought his work. This was in 1927 and until 1S4S Balzac wrote and published nin:ty- seven works. From an early date he made certain groupings in the arrange ment of these stories, as Scenes From Private Life," Scenes of Provincial Life,'' Scenes of Parisian Life" But the ieda of a name so comprehensive as "The Human Comedy" came gradually and it was 1S42 before the scheme was ready to be unfolded before the public in its entirety. It was now the author s intense purpose to add stone after stone until the edifice should be built up; yet. like many another edifice in the world of art and letters Balzac's comprehen- sive survey of his fellow-mem was never QllfA finished Ra1zn0 fn 1o. Hindu expression, was "an arti ficzr, who built like a giant, and finished like a. jewelerr' What matters if a few of the balconies of its superb super structure are incomplete the ground work of ths "Comedie Humaine" was grandly conceived and admiralty exc cuted.
 Sir Walter Scott, indeed, invented TO mances, and the romance unlike the novel of Balzac, depicts a world-that Is better than ths actual one. The histo- rian of life as Balzac saw it in the "Comedie Humaine," depicted first scenes of private life, in which he shows us childhood scenes of provincial life depicting a period of combat of pas sions and projects.
 Scenes of Partisan Life" where he shows us the tastes, the vices, the ex- aggerated fancies of an exeitable peo- pie in capital which contains at onca the highest and the lowest, the worst and the best. Then came scenes of po- litical and military and country life. All French life to be sure. The charac- ters which hs painted may form part of a Paris dead and forgotten, but the types remain, and the lessons which he deduced therefrom are as eminently instructive now as they wer4 in the days when he wrote. For the finer realism of Balzac directs him without error to the human side of men. Ignoring no fact accepting calmly the things that are affecting no indignation-fe. Hing none Balzac is yet with vision and imagina- iion alive and alert, for the nobler phases of feeling, for the qualities that are exquisite or ideal.
 Howells has said, as the portrait is the most difficult attainment in the art of painting, so the character is the most difficult and the most rare attainment in the art of fiction. By this is not meant the analysis of character or the inquisition of motives, but the creation of a character.
 This Balzac could do to perfection, and he drew with accuracy something over 1000 characters from every walk and station in life; he knew them all from the daintiest of countesses to the veriest of scullery maids. He knew, too, their foibles and weaknesses, or their aspirations and ideals, and they G41 a1. s,. 1.s- James has said, "women are the keystone of th= 'Comedie Mumaine If the men were taken out there would be great gaps and Assures; if the wo- men were taken out the whole fabric would collapse" Balzac received much from women and he owed them much in return. Above all writers of fiction, he knew the feminine heart; its thou sand little vanities and pulsations and emotions; it's hopes and illusions, it's sorrows and heart-breaks, and his fame would endure alone for his portraiture of those women of thirty-the duchesses and viscountssses of the end of the Res- toration-who, as Saint Beure said, Al ready on the stage, awaited their painter with a vague anxiety, so that when he and they stood face to face there was a certain electric movement of recogni- tion." A late critic has said 'In the veins of his chara acters there is not drop of ink; they live and move and have their being, and their eyelashes are as delicately finished as their epi- grams"
 It is true, for Balzac is the genius and artist, whether it be in depicting the sacrificing passion of fatherhood, as found in "Pere Goriot,' or the quiet self surrendering of "Eugenie GraHdet," or the depletion of that class of fascinating scoundrels of which Rastignas is the type, or the delicious rendering of his immortal women, it is the same to the author, he knows them all. In the opening pages of his books the heart of each is laid bare; they seem to be so human and real we come to know them and sympathize with them far more sometimes than we ever came to know men and women of flesh and blood.