The de Goncourts, in their _History of French Society
during the Revolution and under the Directoire_, applied this method
with all the zeal of fresh disciples, and with hardly enough
discretion. Taine's _Origins of Contemporary France_ abdicates none of
the older historian's role, but its background is Balzacian. Among the
later writers who have taken up the historian's pen, Masson, Lenotre,
and Anatole France, illustrate the newer principles, each with a
difference, but all excellently, the first in his _Napoleon_, the
second in his _Old Houses, Old Papers_, the third in his _Joan of
Arc_.
It can scarcely be disputed that an entrance of realism into French
literature would have occurred in the second half of the nineteenth
century, had there been no Balzac. Some other novelists or writers,
themselves reacted upon by the scientific spirit, would have set the
example in their own way, if not with the achievement of the author of
the _Comedy_. On the other hand, it is certain that Balzac, had he put
his hand to another treatment of fiction, would nevertheless have
created a school. His tremendous force would have channelled into the
future, whatever the nature of its current.
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