BALZAC, HONORE DE (balts-ac'), a French author, born at Tours, May 20, 1799. He was educated at the College de VendOme and studied law at the Sor bonne. In opposition to his father's wish that he should become a notary, he left Tours in 1819 to seek his fortune as an author in Paris. From 1819 to 1830 he led a life of frequent privation and inces sant industry, producing stories and be coming burdened with debt. He first tasted success in his 30th year on the publication of "The Last of the Chouans," which was soon afterward followed by "The Magic Skin," a marvelous inter weaving of the supernatural into modern life, and the earliest of his great works. After writing several other novels, he formed the design of presenting in the "Human Comedy" a complete picture of modern civilization, especially in France. All ranks, professions, arts, trades, all phases of manners in town and country, were to be represented in his imaginary system i of things. In attempting to carry out this impossible design, he produced what is almost in itself a literature. The stories composing the "Human Comedy" are classified as "Scenes of Private Life, of Parisian Life, of Political Life, of Military Life," etc. Each of the actors in the brilliant crowded drama is mi nutely described and clothed with indi• viduality, while the scenes in which they move are set forth with a picturesqueness and verisimilitude hardly to be matched in fiction. Among the masterpieces which form part of Balzac's vast scheme may be mentioned "Lost Illusions," "The Peasants," "The Woman of Thirty," "Poor Relations," "The Quest of the Absolute," and "Eugenie Grandet." The "Droll Stories" (1833) stand by them selves. He wrote 85 novels in 20 years,
and he was not a ready writer, being very fastidious in regard to style, and often expending more labor on his proof sheets than he had given to his manu script. In his later years he lived prin cipally in his villa, Les Jardies, at Sevres. In 1849, when his health had broken down, he traveled to Poland to visit Madame Hanska, a rich Polish lady, with whom he had corresponded for more than 15 years. In 1850 she became his wife, and three months after the marriage, in August of the same year, Balzac died at Paris. His influence on literature has been deep and many-sided, and novelists with so little in common as Feuillet and Zola alike claim him for their master. He studied character and the machinery of society in a scientific spirit, but he was not content with the photographic repro duction of fact. He was a visionary as well as an analyst, an idealist and a realist in one. His work bears trace of the strain with which it was produced; it is often coarse, often extravagant, occa sionally dull. But few writers give such an impression of intellectual force and in the power of investing his creations with apparent reality he stands first among novelists. The edition definitive of his works was published in 25 volumes (1869 1875) ; the last contains his correspond ence from 1819 to 1850 (English trans lation, with memoir, 2 vols., 1879). A supplemental volume is the "History of the Works of Honore de Balzac," by Lovenjoul (1879). A complete trans lation was made by Miss K. F. Wormley (1889-1894) and another edition was edited by Saintbury (1899).