inds of policy in dealing with the historical
setting. In his lives of the novelists, reviewing _The Old English
Baron_, he describes the earlier type of historical novel in which
little or nothing is done for antiquarian decoration or for local
colour; while in his criticism of Mrs. Radcliffe he uses the very
term--'melodrama'--and the very distinction--melodrama as opposed to
tragedy--which is the touchstone of the novelist. Whatever his success
might be, there can be no doubt as to his intentions. He meant his
novels, with their richer background and their larger measure of detail,
to sacrifice nothing of dramatic truth. _La Princesse de Cleves_, a
professedly historical novel with little 'local colour', may be in
essentials finer and more sincere than Scott. This is a question which I
ask leave to pass over. But it is not Scott's intention to put off the
reader with details and decoration as a substitute for truth of
character and sentiment. Here most obviously, with all their
differences, Balzac and Scott are agreed: expensive both of them in
description, but neither of them inclined to let mere description (in
Pope's phrase) take the place of sense--i.e. of the life which it is the
business of the novelist to interpret. There is danger, no doubt, of
overdoing it, but description in Balzac, however full and long, is never
inanimate. He has explained his theory in a notice of Scott, or rather
in a comparison of Scott and Fenimore Cooper (_Revue Parisienne_, 1840),
where the emptiness of Cooper's novels is compared with the variety of
Scott's, the solitude of the American lakes and forests with the crowd
of life commanded by the author of _Waverley_. Allowing Cooper one great
success in the character of Leather-stocking and some merit in a few
other personages, Balzac finds beyond these nothing like Scott's
multitude of characters; their place is taken by the beauties of nature.
But description cannot make up for want of life in a story.

Balzac shows clearly that he understood the danger of description, and
how impossible, how unreasonable, it is to make scenery do instead of
story and characters. He does not seem to think that Scott has failed in
this respect, while in his remarks on Scott's humour he proves how far
he is from the critics who found in Scott nothing but scenery and
accoutrements and the rubbish of old chronicles. Scott's chivalry and
romance are not what Balzac is thinking about. Balzac is considerin