The first major article Taine dedicated to a novelist, Dickens, was published on 1st February 1856. It already contains the essential elements of a reflection on the contemporary novel which Taine will develop in 1857 with his article on Thackeray and in 1858 with his long study of Balzac. The novel according to Taine is the genre that needs to aim for a kind of both aesthetic and scientific impassivity, in contrast to the moral judgement traditionally associated with satire and elegy. The novel is confronted with the grandeur of reality: with both what is admirable and with what is measurable.