Yet, while this observation of _things_ is not to be denied, Balzac's observation of _persons_ is a matter much more debatable. To listen to some of the more uncritical--especially among the older and now almost traditional--estimates of him, an unwary reader who did not correct these, judging for himself, might think that Balzac was as much of an "observational" realist in character as Fielding, as Scott when it served his turn, as Miss Austen, or as Thackeray. Longer study and further perspective seem recently to have put more people in the position which only a few held some years ago. The astonishing force, completeness, _relative_ reality of his creations is more and more admitted, but it is seen (M. Le Breton, for instance, admits it in almost the very words) that the reality is often not _positive_. In fact the _Comedie_ may remind some of the old nautical laudation of a ship which cannot only sail close to the wind, but even a point or two on the other side of it. If even Frenchmen now confess that Balzac's characters are very often not _des etres reels_, no Englishman need be ashamed of having always thought so. The fact is that this giant in novel-writing did actually succeed in doing what some of his brethren in _Hyperion_ would have liked to do--in setting up a new world for himself and getting out of the existing universe. His characters are never _in_human; they never fail to be human; they are of the same flesh and blood, the same soul and spirit, as ourselves. But they have, as it were, colonised the fresh planet--the Balzacium Sidus--and taken new colour and form from its idiosyncrasies.[167] [Sidenote: Its effect on successors.]