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JSumaine can . be read -without admiration , and some of them are chefs-d ' oeuvre . Throughout literature we know o no writer , the magnitude of whose faults are allied to such splendid qualities . His immense ambition was to become the Historian of Society , to make every aspect of modern life and character , however varied , pass before his pencil that he might copy it . To embrace the whole nineteenth century ,
its heroisms , its vices , its silent sufferings , its loud and ostentatious enjoyments , its crimes , its frivolities , its ambitions and intrigues , and to make them live in a world re-created by him for this special purpose : this was his dream , his daily work ! The perseverant labour with which he worked at it is known to very few . He studied almost every science and every profession that he might be able to depict it . The arid labours of the law were not too
repulsive ; the painful scenes visited by the physician and the priest were as eagerly sought by him as the gayest supper party , for they helped him to fill out the details of his great picture . Nay , such was his intense realism and genuine artistic feeling that he actually invented a whole noblesse , provincial and metropolitan , and this noblesse has not only its accurate genealogy , but even its heraldry ; little does the ordinary reader suspect that those high-sounding
names and splendid blazonries which he meets in almost every chapter of Balzac are all creations , not the names and arms taken at hazard , but each having its true relation to the rest , and being as true , in fact , as the real nobility of which it is the representation . Trivial as this detail may seem , it is not so when taken as an illustration of the writer's method . It is from genuine love and unsparing labour that great works proceed ; and the artist who
shows a solicitude about the verisimilitude of his work shows the right feeling . To speak only of Balzac , who will deny the singular charm which his works have in their air of reality ? Somehow , all the fantastic and exaggerated pages are unable to shake your perfect belief in the truth of his pictures . He believes in them himself , and makes you share his belief . Here we touch upon a curious trait . Balzac was one of the most credulous authors that ever
lived : his imagination had the force of hallucination . He believed in his own creations ; he believed in his own prophecies ; he believed in his own impossibilities . Writing about an Alchemist , he wrote himself into a belief in Alchemy . He created a world for artistic purposes , and almost inhabited it afterwards . His readers often shared his enthusiasm . At Venice ,
where he was idolized , a society was formed among his admirers , who assumed the personages of his fictions , and Rastignac , Maxime de Trailles , Vandenesse , Generals Montcornet , Montrivcau , &c , no less than the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse , de Langcais , Madame Firmiani , and Madame dc Mortsauf , all found actors who brought into real life the fictions of Balzac V Adorable I
His love for " son aeuvre , " as he used to call his novels ( regarding them as so many stones in one edifice ) , made him " Blot anil alter many times , Till all was ripe and rotten . " In this—as in many other respects—he resembled Bulwcr . A work printed is generally an irrevocable net , not to be mended , not to be touched , except in the matter of a few misprints and verbal alterations . Bulwer , like Balzac , always alters a new edition as
hesitating authors alter their proofs ; so that , after a few editions , the work presents somewhat the appearance of the baronet ' s stockings , immortalized by Martinus Scriblcrus , which , from frequent darning , had lost every vestige of the original wool . Balzac ' s mode of composition was one which fostered this habit : his method was cumulative , not fluent ; he built up the work , ho did not fuse it in the white heat of inspiration . Having written what may be called a rough draft , he sent it to the printer ' s , and from the proof-sheets he rewrote the work—an
expensive but an excellent plan , no doubt , if not abused , but it fostered his tendency to patch and patch ; and his enormous love of detail forced him into over-elaborating parts which his first draft , impelled by the true artistic instinct of proportion , had left meagre—an instinct which the subsequent elaboration left out of view . This sort of habit grows upon a man , and makes him vacillate till his whole style suffers from the indecision . And in one of Balzac ' s proofs , instead of a scene there occurred this word — «• Surprise . " The proof was sold by a rascally printer to a Russian
publisher , who produced the work before it appeared in France . Fancy the puzzlement of the fair Russians on coming to that much-meaning word which by Balzac had been written merely as a memento that when he came to that part he was to write a scene of surprise . But we will venture to say that when he did come to that scene , he wrote i * altogether in a different tone from what it would have been , had he written it at first ; and much of the patchy appearance of his works we attribute to his method of composition .
Turning over these volumes of La Comedie Humame ( one of the cheapest books , by the way , that can be bought in France , considering the amount of matter and the superior style of getting up ) one is s truck with the various excellences they contain . Side by side with the peculiar diablerie of the Peau de Chagrin , and the Parisian revelations of Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan— Gobseck , or La Femme de Trente Ans , stands the simple and exquisite story of provincial life , Le Curd de Tours , a chef d ' eeuvre of analysis and Dutch painting . The story is as humble as possible . A simpleminded cure succeeds his defunct
friend to the long-envied position of a boarder in the house of an old maid , who keeps a . pension , and who has rendered this friend ' s existence an unvarying round of delight by the way she cottoned life for him . This cure , simple soul ! ignorant of the world , especially of that amiable but complex portion of it which poets have eternally hymned and satirists eternally laughed at , namely , womanthe cure , we say , ignorant of the road to the female heart , forgets to pay her those little civilities which in his predecessor were exquisite flatteries , and he incurs her hatred . Now . out of such a
subject as that , Balzac has woven a story of attaching interest and of marvellous acuteness . The petty persecutions to which the poor cur 6 is subjected , the gradual involvement of all the gossips of Tours in the warfare , the partizanship displayed , the defeat and death of the cure are painted with exquisite truth and felicity . Provincial life , in all that it has of monotony , smallness , gossip , and petty virulence , is
here displayed ; while the manner in which the intricate obscurities of egotism are traced by the analyst is truly wonderful . Let us add by way of parenthesis that the CurS de Tours is perfectly unobjectionable , and may be read by young ladies . The same may be said of Pierrette , Ursule Mirouet , Eugenie Grandet , Le Medecin du Campagne , Modeste Miff ' non , and some few others ; but in general they are not the works which careful mothers would place in the hands of their daughters .
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UNIVERSITY ABUSES . Oxford Unmasked : or , an Attempt to describe some of the Abuses in that University , By a Graduate . To which is added , a new Preface of considerable length . Fifth Edition . Aylott and Jones . Oncmb upon a time some of the good people of Oxford University honoured the Leader by an indignant auto-da-fe . But that was in our extreme youth . We have survived the fury of canonical wrath , and the hatred of the vinous frequenters of College Common Rooms . We have lived over that — terrible , as doubtless it would
have been , had we felt it . We have not the remotest wish to return the compliment in kind to that conscienceless corporation and endowed monopolist ; but we do feel a certain homoeopathic pleasure in giving publicity to the pamphlet cited above , which tears off , with no gentlo hand , that mask of conventional attraction which so well mystifies the public as to the real character of the institutions it obscures . Our author finds ignorance , despotism , superstition , reckless extravagance , and immorality rioting in this focus of sancity and privilege . The " Graduate " admirably expresses the tone of Oxford in the following paragraph , which he gives as the defence of the friends of the university : —
"We are bad old stupid colleges , but we have rights and charters . An Englishman ' s birthright is obstinacy . Let us alone . What have we to do with education ? Peel was at Oxford . Let us sleep . Found a new university . Come and live near us ; but don ' t ask awkward questions . A Itoyal Commission is illegal , i . e ., it can be proved to bo as much one thing as the other . The law of England is in . that state . We arc in that state . You cannot tell exactly what the law is . Who can ?—Lord Brougham says it is illegal . It is lucky that he was not chancellor of this wicked Ministry , or he might have had a different opinion . You own you cannot compel us . We are so lost in antiquity . Well , then , why encourage our enemies to peach' and draw down upon us the indignation of the country and the irresistible
decrees of Parliament ? We will reform ourselves , indeed we will , in the course of the next century , or so . Behold already a new statute . " He tells us what , indeed , we knew before , that in Oxford religion and her forms are more scoffed at and derided than in any other place in England ; and he recites , as a fam iliar illustration , the instance of a man who has scarcely ever entered a church during divine service since he left Oxford ; " and who gives as a reason that he considers that he * took it all out * during his four years' residence there . " As to the Sacrament , the author continues : —
" It has been denied in the House of Commons that the sacrament is insisted upon ; but we know that , in our time , few would have ventured to absent themselves . A certain College ' Hampden' of our acquaintance did upon one occasion do so , and gave as a voluntary reason , before being sent for , that he did not consider himself in a fit state to take it at that moment . Cui responsum est , 1 Then , Sir , you are not fit for this College ! ' He was leted
not sent away , as his time was nearly comp ; but was subjected to every annoyance , with a view of causing rebellion . We aver that we have seen the sacrament spit from between the teeth , and heard ribald jokes passed about the cup and the wine in chapel , and that in every way there was a kind of shocking contrast between undisguised blasphemy , founded upon the aversion inspired in youth by a monkish discipline only in part carried out , and a « saintship ' too frequently derived from mean motives and early hypocrisy . "
This species of moral coercion is the soul of the «* Oxford system . " We recommend Oxford Unmasked to the Royal Commissioners .
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THE DRAMA . The Princess * s Theatre opens on Saturday under the management of theKeans and the Keeleys , a combination which ought to work well . The company is as good as could easily have been assembled in the present state of dramatic affairs , and is especially strong in comedy , numbering Harley , Meadows , Alfred Wigan , and the two Keeleys , among its attractions . Tragedy seems to rest upon the Keans . We wish the undertaking every success , and in that spirit beg to offer a suggestion or two . The first
is , that the management do all in their power to secure the comfort of the audience by ventilation , ample sitting room , and moderate hours . Let the theatre be a recreation , unaccompanied by physical discomfort , and people will get into the habit of going there . Secondly , let the management beware of the two traps into which their predecessors have fallen in relying upon " revivals " of plays that are no longer interesting , and in relying upon splendid mise en scene as a profitable mode of spending money . A certain amount of ca re and magnificence in the getting
up has become necessary , for the public eye has been so pampered with spectacle that it craves the luxury , but theatrical experience demonstrates that , unless the spectacle be unusually magnificent , it fails to return the outlay , and even a success in that line only raises the standard of expectation , and so becomes ruinous in the end . The example of La Juive at Covent Garden is instructive . And although a piece like the Island of Jewels brought a considerable sum into the treasury , what , commercially , was
its value compared with The Wife ' s Secret , let us say ? A manager had better give a thousand pounds for an effective new play , than spend five hundred upon a spectacle . This is not the literary , but the commercial , view we are taking , because it is idle to address the capitalist on any other ground . Effective plays may be difficult to get—they are so ; but managers usually prefer risking their money in any way except the legitimate dramatic way . It is known , for example , that Leigh Hunt has three unacted plays by him . In Franco or Germany such a thing , with a writer of his acknowledged genius , would be impossible . If what we hear be true , the new
management is desirous of encouraging dramatic authors , by bringing them more liberally before the public . Already one new play is in preparation—The Templar , by Mr . Slous—formerly noticed in our columns , and since its publication altered for representation . Mr . Lovel is also said to have a new work ready ; and , probably . Mr . Marston will not be long before following up the success of Strathmore . Let us , while noticing the plain straightforward Bill which the management nuts forth , and commending the good taste with which all preliminary puffs and promises are kept back—a simplicity which looks like strength—at the same timo gently hint that the three notes of admiration which follow the
announcement of a Ballet Divertissement are singularly misplaced , and smack of a lower grade than the Princess ' s . There is nothing startling in the fuot of a Divertissement , and this triple wonderment has the air of a paradox . Next week we shall speak of tho performances .
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Sept . 28 , 1850 . ] ® f ) ££ L * gfr * t + 643 . . _ . - — —¦ — ——*
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 28, 1850, page 643, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1854/page/19/
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