examples, the earlier as well as the later, give us abundant insight
on him as he was "making himself." The comparison with the early works
of Thackeray (in _Punch_, _Fraser_, and elsewhere) is so striking that
it can escape no one who knows the two. Every now and then Balzac
transferred bodily, or with slight alterations, passages from these
experiments to his finished canvases. It appears that he had a scheme
for codifying his "Physiologies" (of which the notorious one above
mentioned is only a catchpenny exemplar and very far from the best)
into a seriously organized work. Chance was kind or intention was wise
in not allowing him to do so; but the value of the things for the
critical reader is not less. Here are tales--extensions of the scheme
and manner of the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_, or attempts at the
_goguenard_ story of 1830--a thing for which Balzac's hand was hardly
light enough. Here are interesting evidences of striving to be
cosmopolitan and polyglot--the most interesting of all of which, I
think, is the mention of certain British products as "mufflings."
"Muffling" used to be a domestic joke for "muffin;" but whether some
wicked Briton deluded Balzac into the idea that it was the proper form
or not it is impossible to say. Here is a _Traite de la Vie Elegante_,
inestimable for certain critical purposes. So early as 1825 we find a
_Code des Gens Honnetes_, which exhibits at once the author's legal
studies and his constant attraction for the shady side of business,
and which contains a scheme for defrauding by means of lead pencils,
actually carried out (if we may believe his exulting note) by some
literary swindlers with unhappy results. A year later he wrote a
_Dictionnaire des Enseignes de Paris_, which we are glad enough to
have from the author of the _Chat-que-Pelote_; but the persistence
with which this kind of miscellaneous writing occupied him could not
be better exemplified than by the fact that, of two important works
which closely follow this in the collected edition, the _Physiologie