The Human Comedy [7]
as M. de Pontmartin and others did find, the joints in his armor. But when, /a propos/ of the /Port Royal/ more especially, and of the other works in general, Balzac informs us that Sainte-Beuve's great characteristic as a writer is /l'ennui, l'ennui boueux jusqu'a mi-jambe/, that his style is intolerable, that his historical handling is like that of Gibbon, Hume, and other dull people; when he jeers at him for exhuming "La mere Angelique," and scolds him for presuming to obscure the glory of the /Roi Soleil/, the thing is partly ludicrous, partly melancholy. One remembers that agreeable Bohemian, who at a symposium once interrupted his host by crying, "Man o' the hoose, gie us less o' yer clack and mair o' yer Jairman wine!" Only, in human respect and other, we phrase it: "Oh, dear M. de Balzac! give us more /Eugenie Grandets/, more /Pere Goriots/, more /Peaux de Chagrin/, and don't talk about what you do not understand!"
Balzac was a great politician also, and here, though he may not have been very much more successful, he talked with more knowledge and competence. He must have given himself immense trouble in reading the papers, foreign as well as French; he had really mastered a good deal of the political religion of a French publicist. It is curious to read, sixty years after date, his grave assertion that "/La France a la conquete de Madagascar a faire/," and with certain very pardonable defects (such as his Anglophobia), his politics may be pronounced not unintelligent and not ungenerous, though somewhat inconsistent and not very distinctly traceable to any coherent theory. As for the Anglophobia, the Englishman who thinks the less of him for that must have very poor and unhappy brains. A Frenchman who does not more or less hate and fear England, an Englishman who does not regard France with a more or less good-humored impatience, is usually "either a god or a beast," as Aristotle saith. Balzac began with an odd but not unintelligible compound, something like Hugo's, of Napoleonism and Royalism. In 1824, when he was still in the shades of anonymity, he wrote and published two by no means despicable pamphlets in favor of Primogeniture and the Jesuits, the latter of which was reprinted in 1880 at the last /Jesuitenhetze/ in France. His /Lettres sur Paris/ in 1830-31, and his /La France et l'Etranger/ in 1836, are two considerable series of letters from "Our Own Correspondent," handling the affairs of the world with boldness and industry if not invariably with wisdom. They rather suggest (as does the later /Revue Parisienne/ still more) the political writing of the age of Anne in England, and perhaps a little later, when "the wits" handled politics and society, literature and things in general with unquestioned competence and an easy universality.
The rest of his work which will not appear in this edition may be conveniently despatched here. The /Physiologie du Mariage/ and the /Scenes de la Vie Conjugale/ suffer not merely from the most obvious of their faults but from defect of knowledge. It may or may not be that marriage, in the hackneyed phrase, is a net or other receptacle where all the outsiders would be in, and all the insiders out. But it is quite clear that Coelebs cannot talk of it with much authority. His state may or may not be the more gracious: his judgment cannot but lack experience. The "Theatre," which brought the author little if any profit, great annoyance, and a vast amount of trouble, has been generally condemned by criticism. But the /Contes Drolatiques/ are not so to be given up. The famous and splendid /Succube/ is only the best of them, and though all are more or less tarred with the brush which tars so much of French literature, though the attempt to write in an archaic style is at best a very successful /tour de force/, and represents an expenditure of brain power by no means justifiable on the part of a man who could have made so much better use of it, they are never to be spoken of disrespectfully. Those who sneer at their "Wardour Street" Old French are not usually the best qualified
Balzac was a great politician also, and here, though he may not have been very much more successful, he talked with more knowledge and competence. He must have given himself immense trouble in reading the papers, foreign as well as French; he had really mastered a good deal of the political religion of a French publicist. It is curious to read, sixty years after date, his grave assertion that "/La France a la conquete de Madagascar a faire/," and with certain very pardonable defects (such as his Anglophobia), his politics may be pronounced not unintelligent and not ungenerous, though somewhat inconsistent and not very distinctly traceable to any coherent theory. As for the Anglophobia, the Englishman who thinks the less of him for that must have very poor and unhappy brains. A Frenchman who does not more or less hate and fear England, an Englishman who does not regard France with a more or less good-humored impatience, is usually "either a god or a beast," as Aristotle saith. Balzac began with an odd but not unintelligible compound, something like Hugo's, of Napoleonism and Royalism. In 1824, when he was still in the shades of anonymity, he wrote and published two by no means despicable pamphlets in favor of Primogeniture and the Jesuits, the latter of which was reprinted in 1880 at the last /Jesuitenhetze/ in France. His /Lettres sur Paris/ in 1830-31, and his /La France et l'Etranger/ in 1836, are two considerable series of letters from "Our Own Correspondent," handling the affairs of the world with boldness and industry if not invariably with wisdom. They rather suggest (as does the later /Revue Parisienne/ still more) the political writing of the age of Anne in England, and perhaps a little later, when "the wits" handled politics and society, literature and things in general with unquestioned competence and an easy universality.
The rest of his work which will not appear in this edition may be conveniently despatched here. The /Physiologie du Mariage/ and the /Scenes de la Vie Conjugale/ suffer not merely from the most obvious of their faults but from defect of knowledge. It may or may not be that marriage, in the hackneyed phrase, is a net or other receptacle where all the outsiders would be in, and all the insiders out. But it is quite clear that Coelebs cannot talk of it with much authority. His state may or may not be the more gracious: his judgment cannot but lack experience. The "Theatre," which brought the author little if any profit, great annoyance, and a vast amount of trouble, has been generally condemned by criticism. But the /Contes Drolatiques/ are not so to be given up. The famous and splendid /Succube/ is only the best of them, and though all are more or less tarred with the brush which tars so much of French literature, though the attempt to write in an archaic style is at best a very successful /tour de force/, and represents an expenditure of brain power by no means justifiable on the part of a man who could have made so much better use of it, they are never to be spoken of disrespectfully. Those who sneer at their "Wardour Street" Old French are not usually the best qualified