riginal.
It has been said of him, with as much truth as exaggeration, that he has
drawn a whole world of character after having first created it out of
his own head. Balzac's characters are never quite human, and the
atmosphere in which they are placed has something of the same unreality
(though it is for the most part tragically and not comically unreal) as
that of Dickens. Everything is seen through a kind of distorting lens,
yet the actual vision is defined with the most extraordinary precision,
and in the most vivid colours. Balzac had great drawbacks. Despite his
noble prefix he cannot conceive or draw either a gentleman or a lady.
His virtuous characters are usually virtuous in the theatrical sense
only; his scheme of human character is altogether low and mean. But he
can analyse vice and meanness with wonderful vigour, and he is almost
unmatched in the power of conferring apparent reality upon what the
reader nevertheless feels to be imaginary and ideal. It follows almost
necessarily that he is happiest when his subject has a strong touch of
the fantastic. The already mentioned _Peau de Chagrin_--a magic skin
which confers wishing powers on its possessor but shrivels at each wish,
shortening his life correspondingly--and _Seraphita_, a purely romantic
or fantastic tale, are instances of this. Almost more striking than
either are the _Contes Drolatiques_, tales composed in imitation of the
manner and language of the sixteenth century. Here the grotesque and
fantastic incidents and tone exactly suit the writer, and some of the
stories are among the masterpieces of French literature. The same
sympathy with the abnormal may be noticed in the _Chef-d'oeuvre
Inconnu_, where a solitary painter touches and retouches his supposed
masterpiece till he loses all power of self-criticism, and at lasts
exhibits triumphantly a shapeless and unintelligible daub of mingled
colours. Balzac's style is not in itself of the best; it is clumsy,
inelastic, and destitute of the order and proportion which distinguish
the best French prose, but it is not ill suited to the peculiar
character of his work.

[Sidenote: George Sand.]

With Balzac's name is inseparably connected, if only from the striking
contrast between them, that of George Sand. Amandine Lucile Aurore
Dupin, who took the writing name of George Sand, was born at Paris in
1804, and had a somewhat singular family history, of which it is enough
to say here that she was descende