Lawton, Frederick / 2008-06-08 00:00:00

EBOOK BALZAC ***


Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers


BALZAC
BY
FREDERICK LAWTON


DEDICATED,
In remembrance of many pleasant and instructive
hours spent in his society, to the sculptor
AUGUSTE RODIN,
whose statue of Balzac, with its fine, synthetic
portraiture, first tempted the author to write
this book.
PASSY, PARIS, 1910.


PREFACE

Excusing himself for not undertaking to write a life of Balzac,
Monsieur Brunetiere, in his study of the novelist published
shortly before his death, refused somewhat disdainfully to admit
that acquaintance with a celebrated man's biography has
necessarily any value. "What do we know of the life of
Shakespeare?" he says, "and of the circumstances in which _Hamlet_
or _Othello_ was produced? If these circumstances were better
known to us, is it to be believed and will it be seriously
asserted that our admiration for one or the other play would be
augmented?" In penning this quirk, the eminent critic would seem
to have wilfully overlooked the fact that a writer's life may have
much or may have little to do with his works.
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