[1]See W. T. Blanford, "Geological Notes on the Hills in the neighbourhood of the Sind and Punjab Frontier between Quetta and Dera Ghazi Khan,"Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xx. pt. 2 (1883); E. Vredenburg, "A Geological Sketch of the Baluchistan Desert, and part of Eastern Persia,"Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxxi. pt. 2 (1901); E. Vredenburg, "On the Occurrence of a Species of Halorites in the Trias of Baluchistan,"Rec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxxi. (1904), pp. 162-166, pls. 17, 18.[2]See V. A. Smith,Early Hist. of India(ed. 1908), p. 103 seq.
[1]See W. T. Blanford, "Geological Notes on the Hills in the neighbourhood of the Sind and Punjab Frontier between Quetta and Dera Ghazi Khan,"Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xx. pt. 2 (1883); E. Vredenburg, "A Geological Sketch of the Baluchistan Desert, and part of Eastern Persia,"Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxxi. pt. 2 (1901); E. Vredenburg, "On the Occurrence of a Species of Halorites in the Trias of Baluchistan,"Rec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxxi. (1904), pp. 162-166, pls. 17, 18.
[2]See V. A. Smith,Early Hist. of India(ed. 1908), p. 103 seq.
BALUCHISTAN,a province of Persia consisting of the western part of Baluchistan (q.v.) in a wider sense. Persian Baluchistan has an area of about 60,000 sq. m., and lying along the northern shore of the Arabian Sea, is bounded E. by British andindependent Baluchistan, N. by Seistan and the central Persian desert, and W. by Kerman. The country has little water and only a small part of it is under cultivation, the remainder being composed of arid, waterless plains, deserts—some stony, others with moving sands—barren hills and mountains. The principal rivers are the Mashkid and that of Bampur which flow away from the sea and are lost in depressions calledhamuns. The rivers which flow into the sea are unimportant and dry during the greater part of the year. Persian Baluchistan forms an administrative division of the province of Kerman and is subdivided into the following twenty districts:—(1) Bampur; (2) Serhad; (3) Dizek; (4) Jalk; (5) Sib; (6) Irafshan; (7) Magas; (8) Serbaz; (9) Lashar; (10) Champ; (11) Fannuj; (12) Bazman; (13) Aptar; (14) Daman; (15) Aprandagan; (16) Asfehgeh; (17) Surmij; (18) Meskutan; (19) Pushteh; (20) Makran, the country of the Ichthyophagi, with the subdistricts Kasrkand, Geh, Bint, Dasht, Kucheh and Bahu. The total population of Baluchistan is under 200,000. The province was practically independent until the occupation of Bampur by Persian troops in 1849, and over some of the extreme eastern districts Persian supremacy was not recognized until 1872.
BALUE, JEAN(c.1421-1491), French cardinal and minister of Louis XI., was born of very humble parentage at Angle in Poitou, and was first patronized by the bishop of Poitiers. In 1461 he became vicar-general of the bishop of Angers. His activity, cunning and mastery of intrigue gained him the appreciation of Louis XI., who made him his almoner. In a short time Balue became a considerable personage. In 1465 he received the bishopric of Évreux; the king made himle premier du grant conseil, and, in spite of his dissolute life, obtained for him a cardinalate (1468). But in that year Balue was compromised in the king's humiliation by Charles the Bold at Péronne and excluded from the council. He then intrigued with Charles against his master: their secret correspondence was intercepted, and on the 23rd of April 1469 Balue was thrown into prison, where he remained eleven years, but not, as has been alleged, in an iron cage. In 1480, through the intervention of Pope Sixtus IV., he was set at liberty, and from that time lived in high favour at the court of Rome. He received the bishopric of Albano and afterwards that of Palestrina. In 1484 he was even sent to France as legatea latere. He died at Ancona in 1491.
See Henri Forgeot, "Jean Balue, cardinal d'Angers" (1895), in theBibliothèque de l'école des hautes études.
BALUSTER(through the Fr. from the Ital.balaustro, so-called from a supposed likeness to the flower of theβαλαύστιον, or wild pomegranate; the word has been corrupted in English into "banister"), a small moulded shaft, square or circular, in stone or wood and sometimes in metal, supporting the coping of a parapet or the rail of a staircase, an assemblage of them being known as a balustrade. The earliest examples are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing the Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as window balustrades and apparently had Ionic capitals. They do not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans, but early examples are found in the balconies in the palaces at Venice and Verona. In the hands of the Italian revivalists they became features of the greatest importance, and were largely employed for window balconies and roof parapets.
The term "baluster shaft" is given to the shaft dividing a window in Saxon architecture. In the south transept of the abbey at St Albans, England, are some of these shafts, supposed to have been taken from the old Saxon church. Norman bases and capitals have been added, together with plain cylindrical Norman shafts.
BALUSTRADE,a parapet or low screen consisting of a coping or rail supported on balusters (q.v.). Sometimes it is employed purely as a decorative feature beneath the sill of a window which was not carried down to the ground. Sometimes flowing foliage takes the place of the parapet, and sometimes so-called balustrades are formed of vertical slabs of stone, pierced as in the Ca' d'oro at Venice and the balconies of the minarets at Cairo.
BALUZE, ÉTIENNE(1630-1718), French scholar, was born at Tulle on the 24th of November 1630. He was educated at his native town and took minor orders. As secretary to Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Toulouse, he won the appreciation of that learned prelate to such a degree that at his death Marca left him all his papers. Thus it came about that Baluze produced the first complete edition of Marca's treatiseDe libertatibus Ecclesiae Gallicanae(1663), and brought out hisMarca hispanica(1688 f.). About 1667 Baluze entered Colbert's service, and until 1700 was in charge of the invaluable library belonging to that minister and to his son the marquis de Seignelai. He enriched it prodigiously (see the history of the Colbertine library in theCabinet des Manuscritsby M. Léopold Delisle, vol. i.), and Colbert rewarded him by obtaining various benefices for him, and the post of king's almoner (1679). Subsequently Baluze was appointed professor of Canon law at the Collège de France on the 31st of December 1689, and directed that great institution from 1707 to 1710.
The works which place him in the first rank of the scholars of his time are theCapitularia Regum Francorum(1674; new edition enlarged and corrected in 1780); theNova Collectio Conciliorum(4 vols., 1677); theMiscellanea(7 vols., 1678-1715; new edition revised by Mansi, 4 vols. f., 1761-1764); theLetters of Pope Innocent III.(1682); and, finally, theVitae Paparum Avenionensium, 1305-1394(1693). But he was unfortunate enough to take up the history of Auvergne just at the time when the cardinal de Bouillon, inheritor of the rights, and above all of the ambitious pretensions of the La Tour family, was endeavouring to prove the descent of that house in the direct line from the ancient hereditary counts of Auvergne of the 9th century.
As authentic documents in support of these pretensions could not be found, false ones were fabricated. The production of spurious genealogies had already been begun in theHistoire de la maison d'Auvergnepublished by Christophe Justel in 1645; and Chorier, the historian of Dauphiny, had included in the second volume of his history (1672) a forged deed which connected the La Tours of Dauphiny with the La Tours of Auvergne. Next a regular manufactory of forged documents was organized by a certain Jean de Bar, an intimate companion of the cardinal. These rogues were skilful enough, for they succeeded in duping the most illustrious scholars; Dom Jean Mabillon, the founder of Diplomatics, Dom Thierry Ruinart and Baluze himself, called as experts, made a unanimously favourable report on the 23rd of July 1695. But cardinal de Bouillon had many enemies, and a war of pamphlets began. In March 1698 Baluze in reply wrote aLetterwhich proved nothing. Two years later, in 1700, Jean de Bar and his accomplices were arrested, and after a long and searching inquiry were declared guilty in 1704. Baluze, nevertheless, was obstinate in his opinion. He was convinced that the incriminated documents were genuine and proposed to do Justel's work anew. Encouraged and financially supported by the cardinal de Bouillon, he first produced aTable généalogiquein 1705, and then in 1709 aHistoire généalogique de la maison d'Auvergne, with "Proofs," among which, unfortunately, we find all the deeds which had been pronounced spurious. In the following year he was suddenly engulfed in the disgrace which overtook his intriguing patron: deprived of his appointments, pensions and benefices, he was exiled far from Paris. None the less he continued to work, and in 1717 published a history of his native town,Historiae Tutelensis libri tres. Before his death he succeeded in returning to Paris, where he died unconvinced of his errors on the 28th of July 1718. Was he dupe or accomplice? The study of his correspondence with the cardinal gives the impression that he was the victim of clever cheats.
The history of the forgeries committed in the interests of the house of Bouillon forms a curious and instructive episode in the history of French scholarship in the time of Louis XIV. It is to be found in theManuel de diplomatiqueby A. Giry; and above all in a note to theŒuvres de Saint-Simonby M. de Boislisle (vol. xiv. pp. 533-558). The bibliography of Baluze's researches has been made by M. René Fage (1882, 1884) and hisLifetold by M. Émile Fage (1899). To these we must add an amusing book by G. Clément-Simon,La Gaieté de Baluze; documents biographiques et littéraires(1888). Baluze's will has been published by M. Léopold Delisle (Bibliothèque de l'École de Chartes, 1872); his papers are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal (Revue historique, t. xcviii. p. 309). See also the article by Arthur de Boislisle in theRevue des questions historiquesfor October 1908.
(C. B.*)
BALZAC, HONORÉ DE(1799-1850), French novelist, was born at Tours on the 20th of May 1799. His father, Bernard François, never called himselfdeBalzac and Honoré only assumed the particle after 1830. But the father had equally little right to the name of Balzac at all, for his birth-certificate has been recently discovered. The true name was "Balssa," and this in various forms ("Balsa," "Balsas") has been traced for more than a century before the novelist's birth as that of a family of day-labourers or very small peasant proprietors in the parish of Canezac, department of the Tarn. It is probable that the novelist himself was not aware of this, and his father appears to have practised some mystification as to his own professional career. In and after the Revolution, however, he actually attained positions of some importance in the commissariat and hospital departments of the army, and he married in 1797 Anne Charlotte Laure Sallambier, who was a beauty, an heiress, and a woman of considerable faculty. She survived her son; the father died in 1829. There were two sisters (the elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was her brother's favourite and later his biographer), and a younger brother, Henri, of whom we hear little and that little not very favourable.
Honoré was put out to nurse till he was four years old, and in 1806, when he was seven, was sent to thecollège(grammar school) of Vendôme, where he remained till April 1813 as a strict boarder without any holidays. From this he passed as a day-boy to thecollègeof Tours. His father's official work was transferred to Paris the year after, and Balzac came under the teaching of a royalist private schoolmaster, M. Lepitre, and others. He left school altogether in 1816, being then between seventeen and eighteen. His experiences at Vendôme served as base for much ofLouis Lambert, and he seems to have been frequently in disgrace. Later, his teachers appear to have found him remarkable neither for good nor for evil. He was indeed never a scholar; but he must have read a good deal, and as he certainly had no time for it later, much of this reading must have been done early.
The profession which Balzac's father chose for him was the law; and he not only passed through the schools thereof, and duly obtained hislicence, but had three years' practical experience in the offices of a notary and a solicitor (avoué), for the latter of whom, M. Guillonnet-Merville, he seems to have had a sincere respect. But though no man of letters has ever had, in some ways, such a fancy for business, no man of business could ever come out of such a born man of letters. And when in 1820 (thelicencehaving been obtained and M. Balzac, senior, having had some losses) the father wished the son to become a practising lawyer in one or another branch, Honoré revolted. His family had left Paris, and they tried to starve him into submission by establishing him in a garret with a very small allowance. Here he began to write tragedies, corresponded (in letters which have fortunately been preserved) with his sister Laure, and, most important of all, attempted something in prose fiction. The tragedyCromwellwas actually completed and read to friends if not to others; nay more, the manuscript exists in the hands of M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, the great authority on Balzac's life and bibliography; but it has never been published. The novels,CocqsigrueandStella, proved abortions, but were only the first of many attempts at his true way until he found it. Drama he never abandoned; but for him it was always an error.
The garret-period from 1820 to 1822 was succeeded by another of equal length at home, but before it had finished (1821) he found his way into print with the first of the singular productions which (and that not entirely or finally) have taken a sort of outside place in his works under the title ofŒuvres de jeunesse. Theincunabulaof Balzac wereLes Deux Hector, ou Les Deux Families bretonnes, andCharles Pointel, ou Mon Cousin de la main gauche. They were followed next year by six others:—L'Héritière de Birague;Jean Louis, ou La Fille trouvée;Clotilde de Lusignan, ou Le Beau Juif;Le Centenaire, ou Les Deux Beringheld;Le Vicaire des Ardennes;Le Tartare, ou Le Retour de l'exilé. And these were again followed up in 1823 by three more:La Dernière Fée, ou La Nouvelle Lampe merveilleuse;Michel et Christine et la suite;L'Anonyme, ou Ni père ni mère. In 1824 cameAnnette et le criminel, a continuation of theVicaire; in 1825,Wann-Chlore, which afterwards took the less extravagant title ofJane la pâle. These novels, which filled some two score volumes originally, were published under divers pseudonyms ("Lord R'hoone," an anagram of "Honoré," "Horace de Saint Aubin," &c.), and in actual collaboration with two or three other writers. But though there is not yet in them anything more than the faintest dawn of the true Balzac, though no one of them is good as a whole, and very few parts deserve that word except with much qualification, they deserve far more study than they have usually received, and it is difficult to apprehend the true Balzac until they have been studied. They ceased for a time, not because of the author's conviction of their badness (though he entertained no serious delusions on this subject), nor because they failed of a certain success in actual money return, but because he had taken to the earliest, the most prolonged, and the most disastrous of his dabblings in business—this time as a publisher to some extent and still more as a printer and type-founder. Not very much was known about his experiences in this way (except their general failure, and the result in hampering him with a load of debt directly for some ten years and indirectly for the whole of his life) till in 1903 MM. Hanotaux and Vicaire published the results of their inquiries into the actual accounts of the concern. There seems to have been no reason why it should not have succeeded, and there has been claimed for it first, that it provided Balzac with a great amount of actual detail which he utilized directly in the novels, and secondly, that it gave him at whatever cost a still more valuable experience of practical life—the experience which has so often been wanting to men of letters. Anyhow, from 1825 to 1828, the future author of theComédie humainewas a publisher, printer and type-founder; and in the last year he had to abscond, or something like it, under pressure of debts which were never fully settled till 1838, and then by a further obligation of ninety thousand francs, chiefly furnished by his mother and never repaid to her.
It was Balzac's habit throughout his life to relieve the double pressure of debt and of work by frequent excursions into the country and abroad. On this occasion he fled to Brittany with an introduction to a M. and Mme. de Pommereul, who received him hospitably in their château near Fougères. Here he obtained some of the direct material, and most of the scenery and atmosphere, for what he himself recognized as his first serious attempt in novel-writing,Les Chouans, or, as it was at first called,Le Dernier Chouan. This book (obviously written in direct following of Scott, of whom Balzac was a lifelong admirer) has been very variously judged—those who lay most stress on his realism thinking little of it, while those who maintain that he was always a romantic "with a difference" place it higher. It has at any rate brilliant colouring, some very vivid scenes, and almost more passion as well as "curtain" at its ending than any other of his books. Though not without a touch of melodrama it differs utterly from the confused and tedious imitations of Mrs Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis and C. R. Maturin which fill most of theŒuvres de jeunesse. At the same time Balzac was engaged on a very different work, the analytic-satirical sketches which compose thePhysiologie du mariage, and which illustrate his other and non-romantic side, again with some crudity, but again also with a vast advance on his earlier productions. Both were published in the year 1829, from which his real literary career unquestionably starts. It had exactly twenty-one years to run.
The history of these twenty-one years, though (in consequence mainly of the diligence and luck as a collector of the above-named M. de Lovenjoul) the materials for it are large and constantly accumulating, has never been arranged in a really standard biography, and there seems to be an increasing habit of concentrating the attention on parts of it. It divides itself under three heads mainly, the history of Balzac's business affairs, thatof his loves and friendships and that of his actual work. The first has some small resemblance to Scott's similar experiences, though in Balzac's case there was no great crash but a lifelong pressure; on the other hand, his debts were brought upon him by a long course not so much of extravagance in actual expenditure (though there was something of this) as of financial irregularities of almost every description,—anticipations of earnings, costly methods of production (he practically wrote his novels on a succession of printed revises), speculations, travel, and lastly the collection of curiosities. As regards the second, although his fashion of life made him by turns a hermit and a vagrant, he was on good terms with most of the famous men of letters of his day from Hugo downwards, and seems never to have quarrelled with any man, except with some of his editors and publishers, by his own fault. Balzac was indeed, in no belittling sense of the word, one of the most good-natured of men of genius. But his friendships with the other sex are of much more importance, and not in the least matters of mere gossip. His sister Laure, as has been said, and a school-friend of hers, Mme Zulma Carraud, played important and not questionable parts as his correspondents. But at least three ladies, all of a rank higher than his own, figure as his "Egerias" to such an extent that it is hardly extravagant to say that Balzac would not have been Balzac without them. These are Madame de Berny, a lady connected with the court of theancien régime, much older than himself and the mother of nine children, to whom he was introduced in 1821, who became to himLa dilecta, who was the original of Mme de Mortsauf inLe Lys dans la vallée, and who seems to have exercised an excellent influence on him in matters of taste till her death in 1836; the marquise de Castries, who took him up for a time and dropped him, and who has been supposed to have been his model for his less impeccable ladies of fashion; and lastly, the Polish-Russian countess Evelina Hanska, who after addressing, asl'Étrangère, a letter to him as early as 1832, became his idol, rarely seen but constantly corresponded with, for the last eighteen years, and his wife for the last few months of his life. Some of his letters to her have long been known, but the bulk of them constituted the greatest recent addition to our knowledge of him as given in the two volumes ofLettres à l'étrangère. Of hers we have practically none and it is exceedingly hard to form any clear idea of her, but his devotion is absolutely beyond question.
Business, friendship and love, however, much more other things, were in Balzac's case always connected with and on the whole quite secondary to work. He would even sometimes resist the commands by which at long intervals Mme. Hanska would summon him to see her, and abstract the greater part of his actual visits to her in order to serve this still more absorbing mistress. He had, as we have seen, worked pretty hard, even before 1829, and his work had partly taken forms not yet mentioned—political pamphlets and miscellaneous articles which are now accessible in theÉdition définitiveof his works, and hardly one of which is irrelevant to a just conception of him. Nor did he by any means abandon these by-works after 1829; indeed, he at one time started and almost entirely wrote, a periodical called theRevue parisienne. He wrote some dramas and planned many more, though the few which reached the stage left it again promptly. Balzac's dramas, as they appear in his works, consist ofVautrin, Les Ressources de Quinola, Paméla Giraud(arranged for the stage by others),La MarâtreandMercadet le faiseur, the last of which has, since his death, been not unsuccessful. But on the whole he did devote himself to his true vocation, with a furious energy beside which even Scott's, except in his sadder and later days, becomes leisurely. Balzac generally wrote (dining early and lightly, and sleeping for some hours immediately after dinner) from midnight till any hour in the following day—stretches of sixteen hours being not unknown, and the process being often continued for days and weeks. Besides his habit of correcting a small printed original into a long novel on the proofs, he was always altering and re-shaping his work, even before, in 1842, he carried out the idea of building it all into one huge structure—theComédie humainewith its subdivisions ofScènes de la vie parisienne, Études philosophiques, &c.Much pains have been spent upon this title and Balzac's intentions in selecting it. But the "Human Comedy," as a description for mere studies of life as his, will explain itself at once or else can never be explained.
Of its constituents, however, some account must be given, and this can be best done through an exact and complete list of the whole work by years, with such abbreviated notes on the chief constituents as may lead up to a general critical summary. Of the two capital works of 1829, we have spoken. 1830, the epoch year, saw part (it was not fully published till the next) ofLa Peau de chagrin, one of the crudest, but according to some estimates, one of the greatest of the works, full of romantic extravagance and surplusage, but with an engrossing central idea—the Nemesis of accomplished desire—powerfully worked out;La Maison du chat qui pelote, a triumph of observation and nature, together with a crowd of things less in bulk but sometimes of the first excellence—El Verdugo,Étude de femme,La Paix du ménage,Le Bal de sceaux,La Vendetta,Gobseck,Une Double Famille,Les Deux Rêves,Adieu,L'Élixir de longue vie,Sarrazine,Une Passion dans le désertandUn Épisode sous la Terreur. In 1831,La Peau de chagrinappeared complete, accompanied byLe Réquisitionnaire,Les Proscrits,Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu(a masterpiece fortunately not unrecognized),Jésus Christ en FlandreandMaître Cornélius. 1832 gaveMadame Firmiani,Le Message,Le Colonel ChabertandLe Curé de Tours(two stories of contrasted but extraordinary excellence),La Bourse,La Femme abandonnée,Louis Lambert(autobiographical and philosophic),La GrenadièreandLes Marana(a great favourite with the author). In 1833 appearedFerragus, chef des dévorants, the first part ofL'Histoire des treize(a collection in the more extravagant romantic manner, very popular at the time, and since a favourite with some, but few, good judges),Le Médecin de campagne(another pet of the author's, and a kind of intended document of his ability to support the cause of virtue, but, despite certain great things, especially a wonderful popular "legend of Napoleon," a little heavy as a whole), the universally admitted masterpiece ofEugénie Grandet, andL'Illustre Gaudissart(very amusing). 1833 also saw the beginning of a remarkable and never finished work-out of his usual scope but exceedingly powerful in parts—theContes drolatiques, a series of tales of Old France in Old (or at least Rabelaisian) French, which were to have been a hundred in number but never got beyond the third batch of ten. They often borrow the licence of their 15th and 16th century models; but inLa Succubeand others there is undoubted genius and not a little art. 1834 continued theTreizewithLa Duchesse de Langeaisand addedLa Recherche de l'absolu(one of Balzac's great studies of monomania, and thought by some to be the greatest, though others preferLe Chef-d'œuvre inconnu),La Femme de trente ans(the chief example of the author's caprice for re-handling, and very differently judged as a whole), with yet another of the acknowledged triumphs,Le Père Goriot. On the whole, this year's work, though not the author's largest, is perhaps his most unique. Next year (1835) followedMelmoth réconcilié(a tribute to the great influence which Maturin exercised, not over Balzac only, at this time in France),Un Drame au bord de la mer, the brilliant, if questionable, conclusion ofLes Treize,La Fille aux yeux d'or,Le Contrat de mariageandSéraphita. This last, a Swedenborgian rhapsody of great beauty in parts, has divided critics almost more than anything else of its writer's, some seeing in it (with excuse) nothing but the short description given above in three words, the others (with justice) reckoning it his greatest triumph of style and his nearest attempt to reach poetry through prose. 1836 furnishedLa Messe de l'athée,Interdiction,Facino Cane,Le Lys dans la vallée(already referred to and of a somewhat sickly sweetness),L'Enfant maudit,La Vieille FilleandLe Secret des Ruggieri(connected with the earlierLes deux Rêvesunder the general title,Sur Cathérine de Médicis, and said to have been turned out by Balzac in a single night, which is hardly possible). In 1837 were publishedLes Deux Poètes, destined to form part ofIllusions perdues,Les Employés,Gambaraand another capital work,Histoire de la grandeur et de la décadencede César Birotteau, where Balzac's own unlucky experiences in trade are made thoroughly matter of art. 1838 was less fruitful, contributing onlyLe Cabinet des antiques, which had made an earlier partial appearance,La Maison NucingenandUne Fille d'Ève. But 1839 made amends with the second part ofIllusions perdues,Un Grand Homme de province à Paris(one of Balzac's minor diploma-pieces),Le Curé de village(a very considerable thing), and two smaller stories,Les Secrets de la princesse de CadignanandMassimilla Doni.Pierrette,Z. Marcas,Un Prince de la BohèmeandPierre Grassoufollowed in 1840, and in 1841Une Ténébreuse Affaire(one of his most remarkable workings-up of the minor facts of actual history),Le Martyr Calviniste(the conclusion ofSur Cathérine de Médicis),Ursule Mirouet(an admirable story),La Fausse MaîtresseandMémoires de deux jeunes mariées, on which again there have been very different opinions. 1842 suppliedAlbert Savarus(autobiographical largely),Un Début dans la vie, the very variously named and often rehandledRabouilleuse(which, since Taine's exaltation of it, has often been taken as a Balzacian quintessence), andAutre étude de femme, yet another rehandling of earlier work. In 1843 came the introduction of the completedSur Cathérine de Médicis,HonorineandLa Muse du département(almost as often reconstructed asLa Femme de trente ans), withComment aiment les jeunes filles(a similar rehandling intended to start the collectedSplendeurs et misères des courtisanes), and a further instalment ofIllusions perdues,Les Souffrances d'un inventeur. Three out of the next four years were astonishingly fruitful. 1844 gaveModeste Mignon(a book with a place to itself, and said to be founded on a story actually written by Madame Hanska),Gaudissart II.,A combien l'amour revient aux vieillards(a second part of theSplendeurs),Béatrix(one of the most powerful if not of the most agreeable), and the first and very promising part ofLes Paysans. OnlyUn Homme d'affairescame out in 1845, but this was made up in 1846 byLes Comédiens sans le savoir(sketched earlier), another part of theSplendeurs,Où mènent les mauvais chemins, the first part ofLes Parents pauvres,La Cousine Bette(sometimes considered the topmost achievement of Balzac's genius), and the final form of a work first issued fifteen years earlier and often retouched,Petites misères de la vie conjugale. 1847 was even richer, withLe Cousin Pons(the second part ofLes Parents pauvres, and again a masterpiece), the conclusion of theSplendeurs,La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin,L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine(which had been on and off the stocks for five years), and the unfinishedDéputé d'Arcis. This was the last scene of the comedy that appeared in the life of its author. The conclusion of theDéputé d'Arcis, published in 1853, and those ofLes PaysansandLes Petits Bourgeoiswhich appeared, the first in this year, the second wholly in 1855, are believed or known to be by Balzac's friend, Charles Rabou (1803-1871).
This immense and varied total stands to its author in a somewhat different relation from that of any other work to any other writer. It has been well said that the whole of Balzac's production was always in his head together; and this is the main justification for his syllabus of it as the "Comedy." Some part never came out of his head into print; we have numerous titles of work (sometimes spoken of in his letters as more or less finished) of which no trace remains, or only fragmentary MS. sketches. One apparently considerable book,La Bataille, which was to be devoted to the battle of Essling, and for which he actually visited the ground, is frequently referred to as in progress from the time of his early letters to Madame Hanska onwards; but it has never been found. Another result of this relation was the constant altering, re-shaping, re-connecting of the different parts. That if Balzac had lived as long as Hugo, and had preserved his faculties as well, he could never have finished theComédie, is of course obvious: the life of Methuselah, with the powers of Shakespeare, would not suffice for that. But that he never would—even if by some impossibility he could—is almost equally certain. Whether there is any mark of decline in his latest work has been disputed, but there could hardly have been farther advance, and the character of the whole, not easy to define, is much less hard to comprehend, if prejudice be kept out of the way. That character was put early, but finally, by Victor Hugo in his funeral discourse on Balzac, whose work he declared, with unusual terseness, among other phrases of more or less gorgeous rhetoric, to be "observation and imagination." It may be doubted whether all the volumes written on Balzac (a reasoned catalogue of the best of which will be found below) have ever said more than these three words, or have ever said it more truly if the due stress be laid upon the "and." On the other side, most of the mistakes about him have arisen from laying undue stress on one of the two qualities, or from considering them separately rather than as inextricably mixed and blended. It is this blending which gives him his unique position. He is an observer of the most exact, the most minute, the most elaborate; but he suffuses this observation with so strange and constant an imaginative quality that he is, to some careful and experienced critics, never quite "real"—or almost always something more than real. He seems accustomed to create in a fashion which is not so much of the actual world as of some other, possible but not actual—no matter whether he deals with money or with love, with Paris or with the provinces, with old times or with new. A further puzzle has arisen from the fact that though Balzac has virtuous characters, he sees humanity on the whole "in black": and that, whether he actually prefers the delineation of vice, misfortune, failure, or not, he produces as a rule in his readers the sensation familiarly described as "uncomfortable." His morality has been fiercely attacked and valiantly defended, but it is absolutely certain that he wrote with no immoral intention, and with no indifference to morality. In the same way there has been much discussion of his style, which seldom achieves beauty, and sometimes falls short of correctness, but which still more seldom lacks force and adequacy to his own purpose. On the whole, to write with the shorthand necessary here, it is idle to claim for Balzac an absolute supremacy in the novel, while it may be questioned whether any single book of his, or any scene of a book, or even any single character or situation, is among the very greatest books, scenes, characters, situations in literature. But no novelist has created on the same scale, with the same range; none has such a cosmos of his own, pervaded with such a sense of the originality and power of its creator.
Balzac's life during these twenty years of strenuous production has, as regards the production itself, been already outlined, but its outward events, its distractions or avocations—apart from that almost weekly process of "raising the wind," of settling old debts by contracting new ones, which seems to have taken up no small part of it—must now be shortly dealt with. Besides constant visits to the Margonne family at Sache in Touraine, and to the Carrauds at Frapesle in Berry, he travelled frequently in France. He went in 1833 to Neuchatel for his first meeting with Madame Hanska, to Geneva later for his second, and to Vienna in 1835 for his third. He took at least two flights to Italy, in more or less curious circumstances. In 1838, he went on a journey to Sardinia to make his fortune by melting the silver out of the slag-heaps of Roman mines—a project, it seems, actually feasible and actually accomplished, but in which he was anticipated. The year before, tired of Paris apartments, he had bought ground at Ville d'Avray, and there constructed, certainly at great, though perhaps exaggerated expense, his villa of Les Jardies, which figures largely in the Balzacian legend. His rash and complicated literary engagements, and (it must be added) his disregard of them when the whim took him, brought him into frequent legal difficulties, the most serious of which was a law-suit with theRevue de Parisin 1836. In 1831, and again in 1834, he had thought of standing for election as Deputy, and in the latter year he actually did so both at Cambrai and Angoulême; but it is not certain that he received any votes. He also more than once took steps to become a candidate for the Academy, but retired on several occasions before the voting, and when at last, in 1849, he actually stood, he only obtained two votes.
As early as the Genevan meeting of 1833, Madame Hanska had formally promised to marry Balzac in the case of her husband'sdeath, and this occurred at the end of 1841. She would not, however, allow him even to visit her till the next year had expired, and then, though he travelled to St Petersburg and the engagement was renewed after a fashion, its fulfilment was indefinitely postponed. For some years Balzac met his beloved at Baden, Wiesbaden, Brussels, Paris, Rome and elsewhere. Only in September 1847 was he invited on the definite footing of her future husband to her estate of Wierzschovnia in the Ukraine; and even then the visit, interrupted by one excursion to Paris and back, was prolonged for more than two years before (on the 14th of March 1850) the wedding actually took place. But Balzac's ownPeau de chagrinwas now reduced to its last morsel. His health, weakened by his enormous labours, had been ruined by the Russian cold and his journeyings across Europe. The pair reached the house at Paris in the rue Fortunée, which Balzac had bought for his wife and filled with his collections, at the end of May. On Sunday, the 17th of August, Victor Hugo found Balzac dying, attended by his mother, but not by his wife. He actually died at half-past eleven that night and was buried on the 20th, the pall-bearers being Hugo himself, Dumas, Sainte-Beuve (an enemy, but in this case a generous one) and the statesman Baroche, in Père La Chaise, where Hugo delivered the speech cited above.
Bibliography.—The extraordinarily complicated bibliography of Balzac will be found all but complete in theHistoire des œuvres(1875 and later), attached by M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul to theÉdition définitive, and supplemented by him in numerous smaller works,Autour de Balzac,Une Page perdue de Balzac, &c. Summaries of it will be found appended to the introductory critical notices of each volume of the English translation edited by Saintsbury (London, 1895-1898), which also contains a short Memoir and general criticism. Before theÉdition définitive(1869 onwards), the works had been issued during the author's life in various forms and instalments, the earliestComédie humainebeing of 1842 to 1846 in sixteen volumes. For many years, however, the edition best known was that referred to in Browning as "all Balzac's novels fifty volumes long," really fifty-five small and closely printed 24mos kept stereotyped with varying dates by Michel (Calmann) Lévy, which did not contain the miscellaneous works and was not arranged according to the author's last disposition, but did include theŒuvres de jeunesse. These were not reprinted in theÉdition définitive, but this gives the miscellaneous works in four volumes, an invaluable volume of correspondence, and theHistoire des œuvresas cited. To this was added, in 1893, another volume,Répertoire des œuvres de Balzac, in which the history of the various personages of theComédieis tracked throughout and ranged under separate articles by MM. Cerfbeer and Christophe with extraordinary pains, and with a result of usefulness which should have protected it from some critical sneers. In 1899 appeared, as the first volume ofŒuvres posthumes, an instalment of theLettres à l'étrangère, and in 1906 a second (up to 1844) with a portrait of Madame Hanska, and other illustrations.
Works on Balzac are very numerous, and some of them are of much importance. Sainte-Beuve and Balzac fell out, and a furious diatribe by the novelist on the critic is preserved; but the latter's postmortem examination inCauseries du lundi, vol. ii., is not unfair, though it could hardly be cordial. Gautier, who was a very intimate and trusty friend of Balzac, has left an excellent study, mainly personal, reprinted in hisPortraits contemporains. Lamartine produced a volume, not of much value, on Balzac in 1866; and minor contemporaries—Gozlan, Lemer, Champfleury—supplied something. But the series of important studies of Balzac, based on the whole of his work and not biased by friendship or enmity, begins with Taine's Essay of 1858, reprinted in volume form, 1865. Even then theŒuvres diverseswere accessible only by immense labour in the scattered originals, and the invaluableCorrespondancenot at all. It was not till the reunion of all in theÉdition définitivewas completed, that full study of man and work was possible. To this edition itself was attached a sort of official critical introduction,L'Œuvre de Balzac, by M. Marcel Barrière (1890). But this is largely occupied by elaborate analyses of the different books, and the purely critical part is small, and not of the first value. Better are M. Paul Flat'sEssais sur Balzac(2 vols., 1893-1894), which busy themselves especially with tracing types of character. Important and new biographical details (including the proper spelling of the name) were given in M. Edmond Biré'sHonoré de Balzac(1897). TheBalzac ignoréof A. Cabanes (1899) is chiefly remarkable for its investigations of Balzac's fancy for occult studies, and the first part (Balzac imprimeur) of MM. Hanotaux and Vicaire'sLa Jeunesse de Balzac(1903) mentioned above, for its dealing with the printing business and the intimacy with Madame de Berny. Two most important studies of Balzac in French, are those of M. A. Le Breton,Balzac, l'homme et l'œuvre(1905), a somewhat severe, but critical and very well-informed examination, and M. Ferdinand Brunetière'sHonoré de Balzac(1906), a brilliant but rather one-sided panegyric on the subject as the evolver of the modern novel proper, and a realist and observerpar excellence. In English, translations of separate books are innumerable; of the whole, besides that mentioned above, but containing a few things there omitted, an American version by Miss Wormeley and others may be mentioned. The most elaborate monograph in English, till recently, was F. Wedmore'sBalzac(1887), with a useful bibliography up to the time. The recent additions to our knowledge are utilized in Miss Mary F. Sandars'Balzac(1904), a rather popular, but full and readable summary, chiefly of the life, from all but the latest documents, and W. H. Helm'sAspects of Balzac(1905), which is critical as well as anecdotic. The present writer, besides the critical and biographical essays referred to above, prefixed a shorter one to a translation ofLes Chouansexecuted by himself in 1890.
(G. Sa.)
BALZAC, JEAN LOUIS GUEZ DE(1594-1654), French author, was born at Angoulême in 1594. At the age of eighteen he travelled in Holland with Théophile de Viaud, with whom he later exchanged bitter recriminations. He was early befriended by the duc d'Épernon and his son Louis, Cardinal de la Valette, who took him to Rome. His letters written to his acquaintances and to many who held a high position at the French court gained for him a great reputation. Compliments were showered upon him, he became an habitué of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and his head appears to have been turned a little by his success. Richelieu was lavish of praise and promises, but never offered Balzac the preferment he expected. In 1624 a collection of hisLettreswas published, and was received with great favour. From the château of Balzac, whither he had retired, he continued to correspond with Jean Chapelain, Valentin Conrart and others. In 1634 he was elected to the Academy. He died at Angoulême on the 18th of February 1654. His fame rests chiefly upon theLettres, a second collection of which appeared in 1636.Recueil de nouvelles lettreswas printed in the next year. His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French prose and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements. Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to Malherbe's in verse. In 1631 he published an eulogy of Louis XIII. entitledLe Prince; in 1652 theSocrate chrétien, the best of his longer works;Aristippe ou de la Courin 1658; and several dissertations on style.
HisŒuvreswere collected (2 vols.) in 1665 by Valentine Conrart. There are numerous English translations from Balzac, dating from the 17th century.
BAM,a town of Persia in the province of Kerman, situated 115 m. S.E. of the city of Kerman at an elevation of 3600 ft. on both banks of the river Bam. Pop. about 13,000. It is the capital of the Bam-Narmashir district and has extensive groves of date-palms and gardens. Outside the town stands the famous citadel with walls 40 ft. in height. This citadel was, even as late as the beginning of the 19th century, the strongest fortified place in Persia, and owed its strength to the Afghans who took Bam in 1719 and were not finally expelled until 1801. Post and telegraph offices have been established there since 1903.
BAMBERG,a town and archiepiscopal see of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria. Pop. (1885) 31,521; (1905) 45,308. It lies on an open plain on the river Regnitz, 2 m. above its junction with the Main, and 39 m. north of Nuremberg by railway. The upper town is built on seven hills, each crowned by a church, while the lower, still partially surrounded by walls and ditches, is divided by the river and Ludwigskanal into three districts. The cathedral is a noble late Romanesque building with four imposing towers. It was founded in 1004 by the emperor Henry II., finished in 1012, afterwards partially burnt, and rebuilt in the 13th century. Of its many works of art may be mentioned the magnificent marble tomb of the founder and his wife, the empress Cunigunde, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, and an equestrian statue of the emperor Conrad III. Other noteworthy churches are the Jakobskirche, an 11th-century Romanesque basilica; the St Martinskirche; the Marienkirche or Obere Pfarrkirche (1320-1387), which has now been restored to its original pure Gothic style. The Michaelskirche, 12th-century Romanesque (restored), on the Michaelsberg, was formerly the church of a Benedictine monastery secularized in 1803, which now containsthe Bürgerspital, or alms-house, and the museum and municipal art collections. Of the bridges connecting the sections of the lower town the most interesting is theObere Brücke, completed in 1455. Halfway across this, on an artificial island, is the Rathaus (rebuilt 1744-1756). The royal lyceum, formerly a Jesuit college, contains notable collections and the royal library of over 300,000 volumes. The picturesque Old Palace (Alte Residenz) was built in 1591 on the site of an old residence of the counts of Babenberg. The New Palace (1698-1704) was formerly occupied by the prince-bishops, and from 1864 to 1867 by the deposed King Otto of Greece. Noteworthy among the monuments of the town is the Maximilian fountain (1880), with statues of Maximilian I. of Bavaria, the emperor Henry II. and his wife, Conrad III. and St Otto, bishop of Bamberg. At a short distance from the town is the Altenburg (1266 ft.), a castle occupied from 1251 onwards by the bishops of Bamberg. It was destroyed in 1553 by Albert, margrave of Brandenburg, but has been partly restored. The schools include the lyceum for philosophy and Catholic theology (a survival of the university suppressed in 1803), a seminary, two gymnasia, a Realschule, and several technical schools, including one for porcelain-painting. The industries of the town include cotton spinning and weaving, silk spinning, the manufacture of tobacco, ropes, metal-ware, furniture, &c. The market gardens of the neighbourhood are famous, and there is a considerable shipping trade by the river and the Ludwigskanal.
Bamberg, first mentioned in 902, grew up by the castle (Babenberch) which gave its name to the Babenberg family (q.v.). On their extinction it passed to the Saxon house, and in 1007 the emperor Henry II. founded the see. From the middle of the 13th century onward the bishops were princes of the Empire. The see was secularized in 1802 and in 1803 assigned to Bavaria.
A brief history of the bishopric is given in theCatholic Encyclopaedia(London and New York, 1909), with bibliography. For general and special works on the town see Ulysse Chevalier,Topobibliographie(Montbéliard, 1894-1899), s.v.
BAMBERGER, LUDWIG(1823-1899), German economist and politician, was born of Jewish parents on the 22nd of July 1823 at Mainz. After studying at Giessen, Heidelberg and Göttingen, he entered on the practice of the law. When the revolution of 1848 broke out he took an active part as one of the leaders of the republican party in his native city, both as popular orator and as editor of one of the local papers. In 1849 he took part in the republican rising in the Palatinate and Baden; on the restoration of order he was condemned to death, but he had escaped to Switzerland. The next years he spent in exile, at first in London, then in Holland; in 1852 he went to Paris, where, by means of private connexions, he received an appointment in the bank of Bischoffheim & Goldschmidt, of which he became managing director, a post which he held till 1866. During these years he saved a competence and gained a thorough acquaintance with the theory and practice of finance. This he put to account when the amnesty of 1866 enabled him to return to Germany. He was elected a member of the Reichstag, where he joined the National Liberal party, for like many other exiles he was willing to accept the results of Bismarck's work. In 1868 he published a short life of Bismarck in French, with the object of producing a better understanding of German affairs, and in 1870, owing to his intimate acquaintance with France and with finance, he was summoned by Bismarck to Versailles to help in the discussion of terms of peace. In the German Reichstag he was the leading authority on matters of finance and economics, as well as a clear and persuasive speaker, and it was chiefly owing to him that a gold currency was adopted and that the German Imperial Bank took its present form; in his later years he wrote and spoke strongly against bimetallism. He was the leader of the free traders, and after 1878 refused to follow Bismarck in his new policy of protection, state socialism and colonial development; in a celebrated speech he declared that the day on which it was introduced was adies nefastusfor Germany. True to his free trade principles he and a number of followers left the National Liberal party and formed the so-called "Secession" in 1880. He was one of the few prominent politicians who consistently maintained the struggle against state socialism on the one hand and democratic socialism on the other. In 1892 be retired from political life and died in 1899. Bamberger was a clear and attractive writer and was a frequent contributor on political and economic questions to theNationand other periodicals. His most important works are those on the currency, on the French war-indemnity, his criticism of socialism and his apology for the Secession.
An edition of his collected works (including the French life of Bismarck) was published in 1894 in five volumes. After his death in 1899 appeared a volume of reminiscences, which, though it does not extend beyond 1866, gives an interesting picture of his share in the revolution of 1848, and of his life in Paris.
(J. W. He.)
BAMBINO, IL(Ital. for "the Babe"), the name given in art to the image of the infant Jesus in swaddling clothes common in Roman Catholic churches. The most famous is the miracle-workingSantissimo Bambinoin the church of Ara Coeli at Rome, the festival of which is celebrated on the feast of the Epiphany (January 6).