Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Honoré De Balzac, the First Complete Translation Into English, Vol. 13 of 25: The Unconscious Mummers; A Prince of Bohemia; A Man of Business; Gaudissart II; The Firm of Nucingen; Facino Cane; A Princess's Secrets; Bureaucracy
Here, however, it is possible for a good-natured critic to put in the. Apology that the artist has tried something unto which he was not born, and failing therein, has apparently committed faults greater than his real ones. This kindness is impossible in the case of the parodies, which are no paro dies, of sainte-beuve. From the strictly literary point of view, it is disastrous to give as a parody of a man's work, with an intention of casting ridicule thereon, something which is not in the least like that work, and which in consequence only casts ridicule on its author. To the criticism which takes in life as well as literature, it is a disaster to get in childish rages with people because they do not think your work so good as you think it yourself. And it is not known that Balzac had to complain of sainte-beuve in any other way than this, though he no doubt read into what Sainte Beuve wrote a great deal more than sainte-beuve did say.
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