A steady course of
Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to
the shadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party to
meet Tomkins, the friend of one's boyhood, when one can sit at home with
Lucien de Rubempre? It is pleasanter to have the entree to Balzac's
society than to receive cards from all the duchesses in May fair.

In spite of this, there are many people who have declared the Comedie
Humaine to be indigestible. Perhaps it is: but then what about truffles?
Balzac's publisher refused to be disturbed by any such criticism as that.
'Indigestible, is it?' he exclaimed with what, for a publisher, was rare
good sense. 'Well, I should hope so; who ever thinks of a dinner that
isn't?' And our English publisher, Mr. Routledge, clearly agrees with M.
Poulet-Malassis, as he is occupied in producing a complete translation of
the Comedie Humaine. The two volumes that at present lie before us
contain Cesar Birotteau, that terrible tragedy of finance, and L'lllustre
Gaudissart, the apotheosis of the commercial traveller, the Duchesse de
Langeais, most marvellous of modern love stories, Le Chef d'OEuvre
Inconnu, from which Mr. Henry James took his Madonna of the Future, and
that extraordinary romance Une Passion dans le Desert. The choice of
stories is quite excellent, but the translations are very unequal, and
some of them are positively bad. L'lllustre Gaudissart, for instance, is
full of the most grotesque mistakes, mistakes that would disgrace a
schoolboy. 'Bon conseil vaut un oeil dans la main' is translated 'Good
advice is an egg in the hand'! 'Ecus rebelles' is rendered 'rebellious
lucre,' and such common expressions as 'faire la barbe,' 'attendre la
vente,' 'n'entendre rien,' palir sur une affaire,' are all mistranslated.
'Des bois de quoi se faire un cure-dent' is not 'a few trees to slice
into toothpicks,' but 'as much timber as would make a toothpick'; 'son
horloge enfermee dans une grande armoire oblongue' is not 'a clock which
he kept shut up in a large oblong closet' but simply a clock in a tall
clock-case; 'journal viager' is not 'an annuity,' 'garce' is not the same
as 'farce,' and 'dessins des Indes' are not 'drawings of the Indies.' On
the whole, nothing can be worse than this translation, and if Mr.
Routledge wishes the public to read his version of the Comedie Humaine,
he should engage translators who have some slight knowledge of French.

Cesar Birotteau is better, though it is not by any means free from
mistakes. 'To suffer under the Maximum' is an absurd rendering of 'subir
le maximum'; 'perse' is 'chintz,' not 'Persian chintz'; 'rendre le pain
benit' is not 'to take the wafer'; 'riviere' is hardly a 'fillet of
diamonds'; and to translate 'son coeur avait un calus a l'endroit du
loyer' by 'his heart was a callus in the direction of a lease' is an
insult to two languages. On the whole, the best version is that of the
Duchesse de Langeais, though even this leaves much to be desired.