one. It occupies a kind of middle position between the melodramatic
romance of his nonage and the strictly analytic romance-novel of his
later time; and, though dealing with war and love chiefly, inclines in
conception distinctly to the latter. Corentin, Hulot, and other
personages of the actual Comedy (then by no means planned, or at least
avowed) appear; and though the influence of Scott is in a way
paramount* on the surface, the underwork is quite different, and the
whole scheme of the loves of Montauran and Mademoiselle de Verneuil is
pure Balzac.

* Balzac was throughout his life a fervent admirer of Sir Walter,
and I think Mr. Wedmore, in his passage on the subject, distinctly
undervalues both the character and the duration of this esteem.
Balzac was far too acute to commit the common mistake of thinking
Scott superficial--men who know mankind are not often blind to
each other's knowledge. And while Mr. Wedmore seems not to know
any testimony later than Balzac's _thirty-eighth_ year, it is in
his _forty-sixth_, when all his own best work was done, except the
_Parents Pauvres_, that he contrasts Dumas with Scott saying that
_on relit Walter Scott_, and he does not think any one will
re-read Dumas. This may be unjust to the one writer, but it is
conclusive as to any sense of "wasted time" (his own phrase)
having ever existed in Balzac's mind about the other.

It would seem as if nothing but this sun of popular approval had been
wanting to make Balzac's genius burst out in full bloom. Although we
have a fair number of letters for the ensuing years, it is not very
easy to make out the exact sequence of production of the marvelous
harvest which his genius gave. It is sufficient to say that in the
three years following 1829 there were actually published the