Balzac’s work has a Shaksperian universality, because it is so distinctly French,—­a familiar paradox in literature.  He was French in his feeling for the social unit, in his keen receptivity to ideas, in his belief in Church and State as the social organisms through which man could best work out his salvation.  We find him teaching that humanity, in terms of Gallic temperament, and in time limits between the Revolution and the Second Republic, is on the whole best served by living under a constitutional monarchy and in vital touch with Mother Church,—­that form of religion which is a racial inheritance from the Past.  In a sense, then, he was a man with the limitations of his place and time, as, in truth, was Shakspere.  But the study of literature instructs us that it is exactly those who most vitally grasp and voice their own land and period, who are apt to give a comprehensive view of humanity at large; to present man sub specie aeternitatis.  This is so because, thoroughly to present any particular part of mankind, is to portray all mankind.  It is all tarred by the same stick, after all.  It is only in the superficials that unlikenesses lie.

Balzac was intensely modern.  Had he lived today, he might have been foremost in championing the separation of Church and State and looked on serenely at the sequestration of the religious houses.  But writing his main fiction from 1830 to 1850, his attitude was an enlightened one, that of a thoughtful patriot.

His influence upon nineteenth century English fiction was both direct and indirect.  It was direct in its effect upon several of the major novelists, as will be noted in studying them; the indirect influence is perhaps still more important, because it was so all-pervasive, like an emanation that expressed the Time.  It became impossible, after Balzac had lived and wrought, for any artist who took his art seriously to write fiction as if the great Frenchman had not come first.  He set his seal upon that form of literature, as Ibsen, a generation later, was to set his seal upon the drama, revolutionizing its technique.  To the student therefore he is a factor of potent power in explaining the modern fictional development.  Nor should he be a negligible quantity to the cultivated reader seeking to come genially into acquaintance with the best that European letters has accomplished.  While upon the lover of the Novel as a form of literature—­which means the mass of all readers to-day—­Balzac cannot fail to exercise a personal fascination.—­Life widens before us at his touch, and that glamour which is the imperishable gift of great art, returns again as one turns the pages of the little library of yellow books which contain the Human Comedy.