convenient medium for the expression of certain ideas rather than a
representation of life. The first strove to popularize a knowledge of
Greek antiquity, the second to combat doctrines that he deemed
fallacious, the third to reform society. However, Rousseau brought
nature into his _Nouvelle Heloise_, and, by his accessories of pathos
and philosophy, prepared the way for a bolder and completer treatment
of life in fiction. Different from these was Restif de la Bretonne,
who applied Rousseau's theories with less worthy aims in his _Paysan
perverti_ and _Monsieur Nicolas, ou Le Coeur humain devoile_. If
mention is made of him here, it is because he was a pioneer in the
path of realism, which Balzac was to explore more thoroughly, and
because the latter undoubtedly caught some of his grosser manner.

The novelists and dramatists whom Balzac made earliest acquaintance
with were probably those whose works were appearing and attracting
notice during his school-days--Pigault-Lebrun, Ducray-Duminil, and
that Guilbert de Pixerecourt who for a third of the nineteenth century
was worshipped as the Corneille of melodrama. These men were favourite
authors of the nascent democracy; and, in an age when reprints of
older writers were much rarer than to-day, would be far more likely to
appeal to a boy's taste than seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
authors. At an after-period only, when he had definitely entered upon
his maturer literary career, was he to take up the latter and use
them, together with Rabelais, La Bruyere, Moliere, and Diderot, as his
best, if not his constant, sources of inspiration. In the stories of
the first of the three above-mentioned modern writers, the reader
usually meets with some child of poor parentage, who, after most
extraordinary and comic experiences, marries the child of a nobleman.
In those of the second, the hero or heroine struggles with powerful
enemies, is aided by powerful friends, and moves in an atmosphere of