im, to become general or more frequent in one or
another class of society, he must be considered morally responsible
for the result. It has already been remarked, in the preceding
chapter, that there are two ways of reproducing reality in literature
and art, one of them favouring, not through didacticism but through
emotion, the creation in the mind of a state of healthy feeling,
thought, and effort; the other, that sort of fascination with which
the serpent attracts its victims. It is certain that Balzac did not
adequately take this into account, certain also that in parts of his
_Comedy_, the secret, unconscious sympathy of the author with some of
his sicklier heroes and heroines could not and did not have that
dynamic moral action which he vainly desired.

Of the chief French novelists or _litterateurs_ who were his
contemporaries, critics are inclined to esteem his influence most
evident on George Sand and Victor Hugo. Brunetiere, indeed, begins
with Sainte-Beuve. But the similarities discoverable between the
author of _Volupte_ and the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ were
present in Sainte-Beuve's work at a period when Balzac was only just
issuing from obscurity, and appear, moreover, to be due to
temperament. In the case of George Sand, the inference is based partly
on the praise she meted out to Balzac in her reminiscences. Brunetiere
specifies the _Marquis de Villemer_ as the one proved example of
imitation. But this novel was written in 1861, eleven years after
Balzac's death; and, in so far as it differs from _Mauprat_ and the
earlier books, whether _La Petite Fadette_ or _Consuelo_, can be shown
to be the result of a natural and independent evolution.

As regards Victor Hugo, on the contrary, there is plenty of _prima
facie_ evidence that he largely utilized Balzac's material and method;
and there is evidence also that Balzac utilized, though in a less
degree, the subjects developed by Hugo. The reciprocal borrowing is
easy to explain, both men, in spite of their fundamental
peculiarities, having much in them that was common--imagination
difficult to control, fondness for exaggeration, language prone to be
verbose and turgid, research of devices to astonish the reader. Hugo's
_Miserables_ is a monument of his fiction that owes much to Balzacian
architecture. The realism of the latter author is converted without
difficulty into the former's romanticism, or, rather, the alloy of
romanticism is so considerable