in Balzac's work that there is little
conversion to make. Ferragus and Vautrin are prototypes of Valjean,
just as Valjean's Cosette exploited by Madame Thenardier is an
adaptation of Ferragus' daughter or Doctor Minoret's Ursula. The
prison manners and slang of the _Miserables_ inevitably recall those
of _Vautrin's Last Incarnation_, while, on the other hand, Hugo's
salon _ultra_ reappears in the _Cabinet of Antiques_. And the
analogies present themselves continually. One might almost say that
the whole of the _Comedie Humaine_ suggested things to its future
panegyrist, who wrote his greatest novel in the years consecutive to
Balzac's death. Of course, Hugo's borrowings, being those of a man of
genius, were not made use of servilely. Like Shakespeare and Moliere,
the author of the _Miserables_ metamorphosed and enhanced what he
took.

Balzac's major influence on literature began as soon as he was dead.
And the men he reacted on soonest were the dramatists; not through his
own plays, which figured so small in his achievement, or, if through
them at all, then only as they applied the same principles as his
novels. The stage, being ever _en vedette_, is best situated to
interpret the signs of the times, and is likewise more open to the
solicitations of novelty, more ready to try new methods. A noticeable
defect of the French drama, in the first half of the nineteenth
century, was the pronounced artificiality of its characters and plots.
Whatever the kind of play exhibited, the same stereotyped noble
fathers, ingenuous maidens, coquettes, and Lotharios strutted on the
boards. Whatever else changed, these did not. Only their costumes
differed. Moreover, the adventures in which the _dramatis personae_
displayed themselves contained always the same sort of tricks for
bringing about the denouement. Even the language had its own style,
outside which nothing was appropriate. All this was classicism in its
most degenerate form, an art from which original inspiration was
banished to the profit of a much inferior species of skill. Be it
granted that the drama, more than any other kind of literature, is
liable to the encroachment and dominance of such artificiality on
account of its foreshortening in perspective. Be it granted, also,
that sometimes a new movement will intensify an old habit. The
Romanticists, though reformers in other respects, did little or
nothing to render the stage more real. Their lyricism, in front of the
fo