BALZAC.

The style of Balzac is too much laboured, and the turn of his thoughts sometimes too much affected, and seldom natural; but although his letters have not the happy air and sprightliness of those of Voiture, they are very pleasing, and possess a certain lively and serious gaiety almost inimitable. There also appears, in all his writings, a great many touches of learning, well chosen and well applied; and, considering the state in which he

found the French tongue, it is surprising how he could arrive at such neatness of style. In consequence of his fame as an epistolary writer, his correspondence became so great as to overpower him; for, in addition to composing with extreme difficulty, he knew that his letters would be shown to everybody, and must therefore be very exact. See how he describes his own case in this respect: “ He receives all the bad compliments of Christendom, to say nothing of the good ones, which give him yet more trouble. He is persecuted, he is killed, with the civilities which come to him from the four quarters of the world; and last night there lay fifty letters on the table in his chamber, which required answers; and those eloquent ones, and such as might be shown, copied, and printed.” He says, in another place: “At this very time I am speaking to you, there lie a century of letters on my table, which wait for answers: I owe some to crowned heads.” As he was the first, in France, who acquired a great name by this sort of writings, so he obtained the title of the “ great epistolizer.” The first letters he published were not by many degrees so good as those which he wrote after his retirement; and yet the latter had not so large a sale as the former. This shows the capricious humour of the public.—Art.Balzac.