The special merit of this foreign author in the eyes of Frenchmen was, that he had substituted the novel of dramatic dialogue for the two forms of the longer novel hitherto in vogue--the narrative, in which the headings of the chapters were summaries of the contents and the author played a prominent part, and the letter form, which squeezed all the surprises and all the passion in between "Dear Friend" and "Yours sincerely." The most talented of the young French writers are plainly influenced by him. The one whose moral standard most closely approached the English, Alfred de Vigny, wrote _Cinq-Mars_, a novel with a plot laid in the days of Richelieu, an entertaining, but now old-fashioned work, in which the contrast of good and evil overshadows all other contrasts, and which betrays a remarkable want of appreciation of Richelieu's greatness as a statesman. There is almost a total absence of Scott's skill in characterisation; instead of it we have a lyric element, the glorification of youthful, impetuous chivalry--the old French _bravoure_. Prosper Mérimée fell under the great Scotchman's influence at the same time as Alfred de Vigny, and wrote his _Chronique du Règne de Charles IX._, a work the spirit of which is still less like Scott's. Mérimée singles out the strong and violent passions in history for their own sake, but also with the French Romanticist's subordinate aim of rousing the wrath of the respectable bourgeois by his audacious unreservedness; his delineation of character is, generally speaking, clear and concise; he tells his tale coldly and with utter disregard of all established moral convention.
Every one knows the characteristic manner in which, at a somewhat later period, Alexandre Dumas employed Scott's wealth of colour and historic style in the production of many light and most entertaining novels, of which _The Three Musketeers_ may be named as an example. But it is not so generally known that Balzac, the founder of the modern French novel, was as strongly attracted as De Vigny and Mérimée by the foreign master who made an epoch in the history of fiction. He desired to follow in his path without being a mere imitator. He believed himself quite capable of rivalling Scott in the delineative art which Romanticism had restored to honour, and was confident of his power to impart much more life to dialogue. In Scott's books there was only one type of woman; in France the writer of historic novels could contrast the brilliant vices and motley morals of Catholicism with the dark austerity of Calvinism in the wildest period of French history. This ensured him against monotony. Balzac, who was always projecting monumental works and whose mind had an instinctive bias towards the systematically comprehensive, finally conceived the plan of depicting each historic period since that of Charlemagne in one or more novels, all of which should form a connected chain--an idea which Freytag, in his work, _Die Ahnen_, has since tried to carry out as regards Germany. The first novel which Balzac published in his own name, _Les Chouans_, was intended to be a link in this chain. It describes the war in La Vendée at the time of the Revolution, and came out in 1829, the same year as _Cinq-Mars_ and _Chronique du Règne de Charles IX_. Two books published much later, _Sur Cathérine de Médicis_ and _Maître Cornélius_, are also fragments of the projected great work. The latter is a novel in which Balzac enters into direct competition with Sir Walter Scott; its hero is Louis XI., whom he considered unfairly treated by Sir Walter. Although these historical romances are good in their way and contain vivid and careful studies of character, they prove that if Balzac had kept to his intention of merely calling the past to life again, his place in the literature of his century would have been an entirely subordinate one; he would only have been known as one of Scott's disciples.