His style was uncertain. It was at times vulgarly trivial, at times bombastic. And deficiency in the matter of style is a serious deficiency; because what distinguishes art from that which is not art, is just that determined exclusion of what is almost, but not quite right, to which we give the name of style. It is, moreover, a particularly objectionable deficiency in the eyes of Frenchmen, with their keen rhetorical sense. But after Balzac's death his works began to be much read abroad as well as in France, and foreigners made very light of this shortcoming of his. The man who understands a language well enough to read it, but has not sufficient knowledge to appreciate all its refinements, easily forgives sins of style when they are compensated for by rare and attractive qualities. And this was the position of the great novel-reading European public. Educated Italians, Austrians, Poles, Russians, &c, read Balzac with unalloyed pleasure, paying small heed to the inequality of his style. The fault will, however, undoubtedly affect the duration of his work. Nothing formless or only half-formed endures. The great _Comédie Humaine_ (like the 10,000 stadia long painting which Aristotle maintained would not be a work of art at all) will not be regarded by posterity in the light of a single work, and the length of time during which its separate fragments retain their place in the literature of the world will be exactly proportioned to the degree of artistic perfection possessed by each. After the lapse of a few centuries they are not likely to be read simply because of the material they provide for the student of the history of civilisation. To deficiency in the matter of form Balzac adds a much greater deficiency in the matter of abstract ideas. It was impossible that the man who was great only as a writer of fiction should receive full recognition in his lifetime. Men had become accustomed to see in the author the spiritual guide, and Balzac was certainly not that. His great powers as an analyst of the human soul were obscured by his total want of understanding of the emancipatory religious and social ideas of his age, ideas which so early aroused George Sand's enthusiasm, and had such a powerful influence on Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and others. His political and religious doctrines, which were a species of homage to absolutism and Catholic orthodoxy, were obnoxious to many. At first men smiled when the sensuous writer with the reformatory ideas quoted the dogmatists of the white banner, Joseph de Maistre and Bonald; but by degrees they comprehended the confusion that reigned in his mind.