Hu Shih said that [the Qing-dynasty satirical work] The Scholars is badly written, because he judged Chinese literature from the standpoint of the 19th-century Western realist novels of Balzac.
胡適先生說《儒林外史》寫的不好，因為他以西方十九世紀巴爾札克的寫實小說來理解中國文學。