and well-known reasons, there is no possibility of comparing it. All
others yield in bulk; all in a certain concentration and intensity;
none even aims at anything like the same system and completeness. It
must be remembered that owing to shortness of life, lateness of
beginning, and the diversion of the author to other work, the
_Comedie_ is the production, and not the sole production, of some
seventeen or eighteen years at most. Not a volume of it, for all that
failure to reach the completest perfection in form and style which has
been acknowledged, can be accused of thinness, of scamped work, of
mere repetition, of mere cobbling up. Every one bears the marks of
steady and ferocious labor, as well as of the genius which had at last
come where it had been so earnestly called and had never gone away
again. It is possible to overpraise Balzac in parts or to mispraise
him as a whole. But so long as inappropriate and superfluous
comparisons are avoided and as his own excellence is recognized and
appreciated, it is scarcely possible to overestimate that excellence
in itself and for itself. He stands alone; even with Dickens, who is
his nearest analogue, he shows far more points of difference than of
likeness. His vastness of bulk is not more remarkable than his
peculiarity of quality; and when these two things coincide in
literature or elsewhere, then that in which they coincide may be
called, and must be called, Great, without hesitation and without
reserve.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.




APPENDIX