[152] It is, however, important to remember that almost the whole of the first of these three decades was taken up with the tentatives, while the concluding _lustrum_ was comparatively infertile. The _Comedie_ was, in the main, the crop of fifteen years only. [153] It ought always to be, but has not always been, put as a round sum to his credit in this part of the account that he heartily recognised the value of Scott as a novelist. A hasty thinker might be surprised at this; not so the wiser mind. [154] This remarkable person deserves at least a note here "for one thing that he did"--the novel of _Fragoletta_ (1829), which many should know _of_--though they may not know _it_--from Mr. Swinburne's poem, and some perhaps from Balzac's own review. It is one of the followings of _La Religieuse_, and is a disappointing book, not from being too immoral nor from being not immoral enough, but because it does not "come off." There is a certain promise, suggestion, "atmosphere," but the actual characterisation is vague and obscure, and the story is told with no grasp. This habit of "flashing in the pan" is said to have been characteristic of all Latouche's work, which was fairly voluminous and of many different kinds, from journalism to poetry; and it may have been partly due to, partly the cause of, a cross-grained disposition. He had, however, a high repute for spoken if not written criticism, had a great influence as a trainer or mentor on George Sand, and perhaps not a little on Balzac himself. During the later years of his fairly long life he lived in retirement and produced nothing. [155] One of the friends who have read my proofs takes a more Alexandrian way with this objection and says "But there _are_." I do not know that I disagree with him: but as he does not disagree with what follows in itself, both answers shall stand. [156] Cf. Maupassant's just protest against this, to which we shall come. [157] An actual reduction of Balzac's books to smaller but still narrative scale is very seldom possible and would be still more rarely satisfactory. The best substitute for it is the already glanced at _Repertoire_ of MM. Christophe and Cerfbeer, a curious but very satisfactory Biographical Dictionary of the Comedy's _personae_. [158] "Sans genie je suis flambe," as he wrote early to his sister. [159] This is about the best of the batch, and I agree with those who think that it would not have disfigured the _Comedie_. Indeed the exclusion of these _juvenilia_ from the _Edition Definitive_ was a critical blunder. Even if Balzac did once wish it, the "dead hand" is not to be too implicitly given way to, and he was so constantly changing his views that he probably would have altered this also had he lived. [160] A certain kind of commentator would probably argue from Mr. Browning's well-known words "_fifty_ volumes long" that he _had_, and another that he had _not_ read the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_.