thin and small. The minor felicities of the literature generally were
denied to him. _Sans genie, il etait flambe_; _flambe_ as he seemed to
be, and very reasonably seemed, to his friends when as yet the genius
had not come to him, and when he was desperately striving to discover
where his genius lay in those wonderous works which "Lord R'Hoone,"
and "Horace de Saint Aubin," and others obligingly fathered for him.

It must be the business of these introductions to give what assistance
they may to discover where it did lie; it is only necessary, before
taking up the task in the regular biographical and critical way of the
introductory cicerone, to make two negative observations. It did not
lie, as some have apparently thought, in the conception, or the
outlining, or the filling up of such a scheme as the _Comedie
Humaine_. In the first place, the work of every great writer, of the
creative kind, including that of Dante himself, is a _comedie
humaine_. All humanity is latent in every human being; and the great
writers are merely those who call most of it out of latency and put it
actually on the stage. And, as students of Balzac know, the scheme and
adjustment of his comedy varied so remarkably as time went on that it
can hardly be said to have, even in its latest form (which would
pretty certainly have been altered again), a distinct and definite
character. Its so-called scenes are even in the mass by no means
exhaustive, and are, as they stand, a very "cross," division of life:
nor are they peopled by anything like an exhaustive selection of
personages. Nor again is Balzac's genius by any means a mere
vindication of the famous definition of that quality as an infinite
capacity of taking pains. That Balzac had that capacity--had it in a
degree probably unequaled even by the dullest plodders on record--is
very well known, is one of the best known things about him. But he
showed it for nearly ten years before the genius came, and though no