death, and this occurred at the end of 1841. She would not, however, allow him even to visit her till the next year had expired, and then, though he travelled to St Petersburg and the engagement was renewed after a fashion, its fulfilment was indefinitely postponed. For some years Balzac met his beloved at Baden, Wiesbaden, Brussels, Paris, Rome and elsewhere. Only in September 1847 was he invited on the definite footing of her future husband to her estate of Wierzschovnia in the Ukraine; and even then the visit, interrupted by one excursion to Paris and back, was prolonged for more than two years before (on the 14th of March 1850) the wedding actually took place. But Balzac’s own Peau de chagrin was now reduced to its last morsel. His health, weakened by his enormous labours, had been ruined by the Russian cold and his journeyings across Europe. The pair reached the house at Paris in the rue Fortunée, which Balzac had bought for his wife and filled with his collections, at the end of May. On Sunday, the 17th of August, Victor Hugo found Balzac dying, attended by his mother, but not by his wife. He actually died at half-past eleven that night and was buried on the 20th, the pall-bearers being Hugo himself, Dumas, Sainte-Beuve (an enemy, but in this case a generous one) and the statesman Baroche, in Père La Chaise, where Hugo delivered the speech cited above.
Bibliography.—The extraordinarily complicated bibliography of Balzac will be found all but complete in the Histoire des œuvres (1875 and later), attached by M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul to the Édition définitive, and supplemented by him in numerous smaller works, Autour de Balzac, Une Page perdue de Balzac, &c. Summaries of it will be found appended to the introductory critical notices of each volume of the English translation edited by Saintsbury (London, 1895–1898), which also contains a short Memoir and general criticism. Before the Édition définitive (1869 onwards), the works had been issued during the author’s life in various forms and instalments, the earliest Comédie humaine being of 1842 to 1846 in sixteen volumes. For many years, however, the edition best known was that referred to in Browning as “all Balzac’s novels fifty volumes long,” really fifty-five small and closely printed 24mos kept stereotyped with varying dates by Michel (Calmann) Lévy, which did not contain the miscellaneous works and was not arranged according to the author’s last disposition, but did include the Œuvres de jeunesse. These were not reprinted in the Édition définitive, but this gives the miscellaneous works in four volumes, an invaluable volume of correspondence, and the Histoire des œuvres as cited. To this was added, in 1893, another volume, Répertoire des œuvres de Balzac, in which the history of the various personages of the Comédie is tracked throughout and ranged under separate articles by MM. Cerfbeer and Christophe with extraordinary pains, and with a result of usefulness which should have protected it from some critical sneers. In 1899 appeared, as the first volume of Œuvres posthumes, an instalment of the Lettres à l’étrangère, and in 1906 a second (up to 1844) with a portrait of Madame Hanska, and other illustrations.
Works on Balzac are very numerous, and some of them are of much importance. Sainte-Beuve and Balzac fell out, and a furious diatribe by the novelist on the critic is preserved; but the latter’s post-mortem examination in Causeries du lundi, vol. ii., is not unfair, though it could hardly be cordial. Gautier, who was a very intimate and trusty friend of Balzac, has left an excellent study, mainly personal, reprinted in his Portraits contemporains. Lamartine produced a volume, not of much value, on Balzac in 1866; and minor contemporaries—Gozlan, Lemer, Champfleury—supplied something. But the series of important studies of Balzac, based on the whole of his work and not biased by friendship or enmity, begins with Taine’s Essay of 1858, reprinted in volume form, 1865. Even then the Œuvres diverses were accessible only by immense labour in the scattered originals, and the invaluable Correspondance not at all. It was not till the reunion of all in the Édition définitive was completed, that full study of man and work was possible. To this edition itself was attached a sort of official critical introduction, L’Œuvre de Balzac, by M. Marcel Barrière (1890). But this is largely occupied by elaborate analyses of the different books, and the purely critical part is small, and not of the first value. Better are M. Paul Flat’s Essais sur Balzac (2 vols., 1893–1894), which busy themselves especially with tracing types of character. Important and new biographical details (including the proper spelling of the name) were given in M. Edmond Biré’s Honoré de Balzac (1897). The Balzac ignoré of A. Cabanès (1899) is chiefly remarkable for its investigations of Balzac’s fancy for occult studies, and the first part (Balzac imprimeur) of MM. Hanotaux and Vicaire’s La Jeunesse de Balzac (1903) mentioned above, for its dealing with the printing business and the intimacy with Madame de Berny. Two most important studies of Balzac in French, are those of M. A. Le Breton, Balzac, l’homme et l’œuvre (1905), a somewhat severe, but critical and very well-informed examination, and M. Ferdinand Brunetière’s Honoré de Balzac (1906), a brilliant but rather one-sided panegyric on the subject as the evolver of the modern novel proper, and a realist and observer par excellence. In English, translations of separate books are innumerable; of the whole, besides that mentioned above, but containing a few things there omitted, an American version by Miss Wormeley and others may be mentioned. The most elaborate monograph in English, till recently, was F. Wedmore’s Balzac (1887), with a useful bibliography up to the time. The recent additions to our knowledge are utilized in Miss Mary F. Sandars' Balzac (1904), a rather popular, but full and readable summary, chiefly of the life, from all but the latest documents, and W. H. Helm’s Aspects of Balzac (1905), which is critical as well as anecdotic. The present writer, besides the critical and biographical essays referred to above, prefixed a shorter one to a translation of Les Chouans executed by himself in 1890. (G. Sa.)
BALZAC, JEAN LOUIS GUEZ DE (1594–1654), French author, was born at Angoulême in 1594. At the age of eighteen he travelled in Holland with Théophile de Viaud, with whom he later exchanged bitter recriminations. He was early befriended by the duc d’Épernon and his son Louis, Cardinal de la Valette, who took him to Rome. His letters written to his acquaintances and to many who held a high position at the French court gained for him a great reputation. Compliments were showered upon him, he became an habitué of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and his head appears to have been turned a little by his success. Richelieu was lavish of praise and promises, but never offered Balzac the preferment he expected. In 1624 a collection of his Lettres was published, and was received with great favour. From the château of Balzac, whither he had retired, he continued to correspond with Jean Chapelain, Valentin Conrart and others. In 1634 he was elected to the Academy. He died at Angoulême on the 18th of February 1654. His fame rests chiefly upon the Lettres, a second collection of which appeared in 1636. Recueil de nouvelles lettres was printed in the next year. His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French prose and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements. Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to Malherbe’s in verse. In 1631 he published an eulogy of Louis XIII. entitled Le Prince; in 1652 the Socrate chrétien, the best of his longer works; Aristippe ou de la Cour in 1658; and several dissertations on style.
His Œuvres were collected (2 vols.) in 1665 by Valentine Conrart. There are numerous English translations from Balzac, dating from the 17th century.
BAM, a town of Persia in the province of Kerman, situated 115 m. S.E. of the city of Kerman at an elevation of 3600 ft. on both banks of the river Bam. Pop. about 13,000. It is the capital of the Bam-Narmashir district and has extensive groves of date-palms and gardens. Outside the town stands the famous citadel with walls 40 ft. in height. This citadel was, even as late as the beginning of the 19th century, the strongest fortified place in Persia, and owed its strength to the Afghans who took Bam in 1719 and were not finally expelled until 1801. Post and telegraph offices have been established there since 1903.
BAMBERG, a town and archiepiscopal see of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria. Pop. (1885) 31,521; (1905) 45,308. It lies on an open plain on the river Regnitz, 2 m. above its junction with the Main, and 39 m. north of Nuremberg by railway. The upper town is built on seven hills, each crowned by a church, while the lower, still partially surrounded by walls and ditches, is divided by the river and Ludwigskanal into three districts. The cathedral is a noble late Romanesque building with four imposing towers. It was founded in 1004 by the emperor Henry II., finished in 1012, afterwards partially burnt, and rebuilt in the 13th century. Of its many works of art may be mentioned the magnificent marble tomb of the founder and his wife, the empress Cunigunde, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, and an equestrian statue of the emperor Conrad III. Other noteworthy churches are the Jakobskirche, an 11th-century Romanesque basilica; the St Martinskirche; the Marienkirche or Obere Pfarrkirche (1320–1387), which has now been restored to its original pure Gothic style. The Michaelskirche, 12th-century Romanesque (restored), on the Michaelsberg, was formerly the church of a Benedictine monastery secularized in 1803, which now contains
