"Dickens said a very clever thing: 'Life is given to us on the definite
understanding that we boldly defend it to the last.' On the whole,
he was a sentimental, loquacious, and not very clever writer, but he
knew how to construct a novel as no one else could, certainly better
than Balzac. Someone has said: 'Many are possessed by the passion for
writing books, but few are ashamed of them afterwards.' Balzac was not
ashamed, nor was Dickens, and both of them wrote quite a number of bad
books. Still, Balzac is a genius. Or at any rate the thing which you
can only call genius...."