For this reason it is that, regarded as an aggregate, the _Comedie
Humaine_ can be admired only as one may admire a forceful mass of
things, when it is looked at from afar, through an atmosphere that
softens outlines, hides or transforms detail, adds irreality. In such
an ambience certain novels that by themselves would shock, gain a sort
of appropriateness, and others that are trivial or dull serve as
foils. But, at the same time, we know that the effect is partly
illusion.
In a writer's entire production the constant factor is usually his
style, while subject and treatment vary. Balzac, however, is an
exception in this respect as in most others. He attains terse vigour
in not a few of his books, but in not a few also he disfigures page
after page with loose, sprawling ruggedness, not to say pretentious
obscurity. His opinion of himself as a stylist was high, higher no
doubt than that he held of George Sand, to whom he accorded eminence
mainly on this ground. Of the French language he said that he had
enriched it by his alms. Finding it poor but proud, he had made it a
millionaire. And the assertion was put forward with the same
seriousness that he displayed when declaring that there were three men
only of his time who really knew their mother-tongue--Victor Hugo,
Theophile Gautier, and himself.
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