To the Abbe Barthelemy, Voltaire, and Rousseau the
novel was a convenient medium for the expression of
certain ideas rather than a representation of life.
The first strove to popularize a knowledge of Greek
antiquity, the second to combat doctrines that he deemed
fallacious, the third to reform society. However,
Rousseau brought nature into his Nouvelle Heloise,
and, by his accessories of pathos and philosophy,
prepared the way for a bolder and completer treatment
of life in fiction. Different from these was Restif
de la Bretonne, who applied Rousseau’s theories
with less worthy aims in his Paysan perverti
and Monsieur Nicolas, ou Le Coeur humain devoile.
If mention is made of him here, it is because he was
a pioneer in the path of realism, which Balzac was
to explore more thoroughly, and because the latter
undoubtedly caught some of his grosser manner.
The novelists and dramatists whom Balzac made earliest
acquaintance with were probably those whose works
were appearing and attracting notice during his school-days—Pigault-Lebrun,
Ducray-Duminil, and that Guilbert de Pixerecourt who
for a third of the nineteenth century was worshipped
as the Corneille of melodrama. These men were
favourite authors of the nascent democracy; and, in
an age when reprints of older writers were much rarer
than to-day, would be far more likely to appeal to
a boy’s taste than seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
authors. At an after-period only, when he had
definitely entered upon his maturer literary career,
was he to take up the latter and use them, together
with Rabelais, La Bruyere, Moliere, and Diderot, as
his best, if not his constant, sources of inspiration.
In the stories of the first of the three above-mentioned
modern writers, the reader usually meets with some
child of poor parentage, who, after most extraordinary
and comic experiences, marries the child of a nobleman.
In those of the second, the hero or heroine struggles
with powerful enemies, is aided by powerful friends,
and moves in an atmosphere of blood and mystery until
vice is chastized and virtue finally rewarded.
The two writers, however, differ more in their talent
than in their methods, the first having an amount
of originality which is almost entirely wanting to
the second. With both, indeed, the main object
is to impress and astonish, and the finer touches
of Lesage and Prevost are seldom visible in either’s
work. As for Pixerecourt, whose fame lasted until
the Romantic drama of the older Dumas, Alfred de Vigny,
and Victor Hugo eclipsed it, he wrote over a hundred
plays, each of which was performed some five hundred
times, while two at least ran for more than a thousand
nights.
