It would, perhaps, lead to the establishment of home missions among the
Bad-Bread and Foul-Air tribes, who make more wretched captives for life
and kill more children than the French and Indians together ever dreamed
of.
_Sketches of Parisian Life. The Greatness and Decline of Cesar
Birotteau_. From the French of HONORE DE BALZAC. Translated by O.W.
WIGHT and F.B. GOODRICH. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 130 Grand Street.
1860. pp. 387.
We are very glad to see this beginning of a translation of Balzac, or
de Balzac, as he chose to christen himself. Without intending an
exact parallel, he might be called the Fielding of French
Literature,--intensely masculine, an artist who works outward from an
informing idea, a satirist whose humor will not let him despise human
nature even while he exposes its weaknesses. The story of Caesar
Birotteau is well-chosen as an usher to the rest, for it is eminently
characteristic, though it does not show the higher imaginative qualities
of the author. It is one of the severest tests of genius to draw an
ordinary character so humanly that we learn to love and respect it in
spite of a thorough familiarity with its faults and absurdities. In this
respect Balzac's "Birotteau" is a masterpiece. The translation, as far
as we have had time to look into it, seems a very easy, spirited, and
knowing one. The translators have overcome the difficulties of _slang_
with great skill, rendering by equivalent vulgarisms which give the
spirit where the letter would be unintelligible.
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