"Generally, in fiction, an author succeeds only by the number of his
characters and the variety of his situations; and there are few
examples of novels having but two or three _dramatis personae_
depending on a single situation. Of such a kind, _Caleb Williams_, the
celebrated Godwin's masterpiece, is in our time the only work known,
and its interest is prodigious."

Sterne, even more than Scott, was Balzac's favourite model. Allusions
to him abound in the _Comedie Humaine_. _Tristram Shandy_ the novelist
appears to have had at his fingers' ends. Not a few of Sterne's traits
were also his own--the satirical humour, in which, however, the humour
was less perfect than the satire, the microscopic eye for all the
exterior details of life especially in people's faces and gestures and
dress; and both had identical notions concerning the analogy between a
man's name and his temperament and fate.

Scott and Cooper being Balzac's elder contemporaries, it happened that
their books were given to the French public in translation by one or
the other of the novelist's earlier publishers, Mame and Gosselin. His
taste for their fiction was no mere passing fancy. It was as
pronounced as ever in 1840, at which date, writing in the _Revue
Parisienne_, he declared that Cooper was the only writer of stories
worthy to be placed by the side of Walter Scott, and that his hero
Leather-stocking was sublime. "I don't know," said he, "if the fiction
of Walter Scott furnishes a creation as grandiose as that of this hero
of the savannas and forests. Cooper's descriptions are the school at
which all literary landscapists should study: all the secrets of art
are there. But Cooper is inferior to Walter Scott in his comic and
minor characters, and in the construction of his plots. One is the
historian of nature, the other of humanity." The article winds up with