o fit place for
the enforcement of them.' He fully realizes that it is by a conflict
between our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatest
dramatic effects are produced. 'It is in the restless and anatomizing
casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel
that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious
horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge,
that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.'

In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission of
the dramatist and the meaning of the drama.

BALZAC IN ENGLISH
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 13, 1886.)

Many years ago, in a number of _All the Year Round_, Charles Dickens
complained that Balzac was very little read in England, and although
since then the public has become more familiar with the great
masterpieces of French fiction, still it may be doubted whether the
_Comedie Humaine_ is at all appreciated or understood by the general run
of novel readers. It is really the greatest monument that literature has
produced in our century, and M. Taine hardly exaggerates when he says
that, after Shakespeare, Balzac is our most important magazine of
documents on human nature. Balzac's aim, in fact, was to do for humanity
what Buffon had done for the animal creation. As the naturalist studied
lions and tigers, so the novelist studied men and women. Yet he was no
mere reporter. Photography and _proces-verbal_ were not the essentials
of his method. Observation gave him the facts of life, but his genius
converted facts into truths, and truths into truth. He was, in a word, a
marvellous combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific
spirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples; the former was
entirely his own. The distinction between such a book as M. Zola's
_L'Assommoir_ and such a book as Balzac's _Illusions Perdues_ is the
distinction between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality. 'All
Balzac's characters,' said Baudelaire, 'are gifted with the same ardour
of life that animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply coloured
as dreams. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. The
very scullions have genius.' He was, of course, accused of being
immoral. Few writers who deal directly with life escape that charge.
His answer to the accusation was characteristic and conclusive. 'Whoever
co