Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by
flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except
language: as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story: as an
artist he is everything except articulate. Somebody in
Shakespeare--Touchstone, I think--talks about a man who is always
breaking his shins over his own wit, and it seems to me that this might
serve as the basis for a criticism of Meredith's method. But whatever he
is, he is not a realist. Or rather I would say that he is a child of
realism who is not on speaking terms with his father. By deliberate
choice he has made himself a romanticist. He has refused to bow the knee
to Baal, and after all, even if the man's fine spirit did not revolt
against the noisy assertions of realism, his style would be quite
sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectful distance. By its means
he has planted round his garden a hedge full of thorns, and red with
wonderful roses. As for Balzac, he was a most remarkable combination of
the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. The latter he
bequeathed to his disciples. The former was entirely his own. The
difference between such a book as M. Zola's _L'Assommoir_ and Balzac's
_Illusions Perdues_ is the difference between unimaginative realism and
imaginative reality. 'All Balzac's characters;' said Baudelaire, 'are
gifted with the same ardour of life that animated himself. All his
fictions are as deeply coloured as dreams. Each mind is a weapon loaded
to the muzzle with will. The very scullions have genius.' A steady
course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our
acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of
fervent fiery-coloured existence. They dominate us, and defy scepticism.
One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de
Rubempre. It is a grief from which I have never been able completely to
rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when
I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was. He created
life, he did not copy it. I admit, however, that he set far too high a
value on modernity of form, and that, consequently, there is no book of
his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with _Salammbo_ or
_Esmond_, or _The Cloister and the Hearth_, or the _Vicomte de
Bragelonne_.--_The Decay of Lying_.