gh has elapsed for realism
to evolve into naturalism so-called. Naturalism is realism stark-naked
--the dissecting-room, and a good deal besides, which Monsieur Zola
illustrated well but not wisely. Daudet, fortunately for his
reputation, was a naturalist _sui generis_, with a delicate artistic
perception altogether lacking to the author of the Rougon-Macquart
series. He was also an independent, but willing to take lessons in his
trade. And how much he learnt from _Cousin Bette_ may be judged by his
_Numa Roumestan_ and _Froment Jeune et Rissler aine_. There are close
analogies also between the best of Balzac's fiction and the sombre
realism of the _Evangeliste_, based on tragic facts that had come
under Daudet's personal notice. Of the two realisms Daudet's is
certainly the more genuine, with its lambent humour that glints on
even the saddest of his pictures.

In neither the naturalistic school of fiction, nor the psychological,
in so far as the latter is represented by Bourget, has Balzac's
influence been a gain. Bourget has borrowed Balzac's furniture, his
pompous didacticism, his occasional indecency--in fine, all that is
least essential in the elder's assets, without learning how to breathe
objective life into one of his characters. Zola borrowed more, but
mainly the unwholesome parts, truncating these further to suit his
theory of the novel as a slice of life seen through a temperament, and
travestying in the Rougon-Macquart scheme, with its burden of heredity
and physiological blemish, Balzac's cumbrous and plausible doctrine of
the _Comedy_. Both novelists made a mistake in arrogating to
themselves the role of the _savant_. Neither of them seemed to
understand that there are limits imposed on each profession by the
mode of its operation. For Zola the novel was not only an observation
working upon the voluntary acts of life, it was an experiment--like
that of the astrologers whom Moses met in Egypt--producing phenomena
artificially, and allowing a law of necessity to be deduced from the
result. And for Balzac the novel was something of the same kind--a
synthesis of every human activity framed by one who, as he proudly
claimed, had observed and analysed society in all its phases from top
to bottom, legislations, religions, histories, and present time. What
Balzac did in fiction and what he thought he did are separated by a
gulf which could only have been bridged over by the long and painful
study of a man survivi