neutrality convey a less effective lesson than the obtrusive preachment of some moral. If a modern French group of writers have shown to what abysses realism descends, Tourguenief has been one of the highest exponents of its higher side.

Pissemsky (1820-1881) first attracted notice by his romance, Tioufiak, "the mattress," published in 1850 in the Moskvitianin, this had been preceded by Nina and Boyarschina, and was followed at pretty regular intervals by a considerable number of novels and stories.1

The novels of Pomialovsky, Melnikof, and Danilevsky' have won their authors considerable fame.

Grigorovich first obtained the ear of the public by his story The Village, published in 1846. His works, which mostly describe the life of the common people, are not free from a certain artificiality of sentiment. His Anton Goremuika was especially popular.

Goncharof published his first novel, An Everyday History, in 1847, and has maintained the popularity it won him by many subsequent works: Oblomof, 1858, may be specially named.

Gertzen, or Hertzen the Nihilist, before entering the terrorist organizations wrote several novels, and tales, which evinced great promise, nor must we omit Chernuishevsky's celebrated novel "What's to be done?"

The novels of Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) are rather descriptions of psychological processes than stories of incident and intrigue. They have, however, though perhaps not for the ordinary herd of novel-readers, an intense interest, for they are largely the genuine portraiture of the writer's own soul, and the narrative of Dostoyevsky's own struggles and experiences, and his own terrible life and exile in Siberia.

His first book, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 in the St. Petersburg Miscellany. Through one of his personages the author speaks out his own poverty, sensitiveness, and struggles. This book elicited very favourable opinions from the chief critics of the time, among whom was Bielinsky. The author followed it

'Dans le Tourbillon, French translation by M. V. Derély. Paris, 1881. Mille âmes, same translator, 2 vols., Paris, 1886.

Two of Danilevsky's have been translated into French, viz., Basile Mirovitch, Paris, 1880, and Potemkine au Danube, Paris, 1881. Euvres, Paris, 1872.

Que faire ? trad. A. T., Milan, 1875.

66

up by several stories which, however, were far inferior. In 1849 Dostoyevsky was implicated in the Petrashevsky conspiracy, was imprisoned for five months in solitary confinement in the Peter Paul fortress, without any books or writing materials, and where, as he says, "he fed on himself." The fearful monotony was broken only by one of the custodians looking into his cell occasionally, and saying, “ You are dying with tedium; well, one must suffer, Christ suffered!" This incident seems to have made a lasting impression upon the prisoner. Dostoyevsky was condemned to four years of penal servitude in Siberia, where he had abundant opportunities of observing the worst classes of criminals. For the greater part of the time a Testament was the only book allowed him. At the expiry of his term he was drafted into the army as a private, promoted to officer's rank in 1856, and subsequently left the army and came to reside in St. Petersburg in 1861. Here he set himself to the most difficult task of writing a description of his Siberian experience, which should be faithful and yet should not be suppressed by the censor. This he achieved in his Zapiski iz Myortvavo Doma. Dostoyevsky's talent culminates, however, in Crime and Chastisement (1866), written, as well as The Idiot, Demons, The Terrorists, in the period 18651871.

Crime and Chastisement (Prestouplenie i Nakazanie) is the history of the conception, incubation, and execution of a murder, the criminal's attempts to escape justice, and afterwards his selfsurrender and expiation. "For once the Russian artist has followed the western canon of unity of action; the drama is purely psychological, and lies in the conflict between the man and the idea. Men of science who make the human soul their study will read with interest the most profound study of criminal psychology which has been written since Macbeth; those who love to beguile an hour or two in morbid mental torture, will find their taste suited; the majority will probably dread the book too much to finish it." " In the year of its publication, 1866, it was the talk of

all Russia.

1 Buried Alive; or Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia. Trans lated by Marie von Philo. London, 1881.

Le Crime et le Châtiment, trad. par V. Derély, 1884.

Humiliés et offensés, trad, E. Humbert, 1884.

? E. de Vogue, Le Roman Russe.

3 A Moscow student assassinated a pawnbroker, with circumstances very similar to those conceived by Dostoyevsky.

Other works of Dostoyevsky, though not maintaining the level of those previously named, are Podrostok and the Brothers Karamazof. Towards the close of his life he published the serial Author's Diary, a kind of Miscellany. The whole of Russian literature is deeply tinged with sadness, but no more sombre and terrible writer is to be found in it, or perhaps anywhere, than Dostoyevsky. There can be little doubt that his captivity and early sufferings unhinged his mind. Like several other Russian authors, his closing days were clouded with the deepest dejection. At nightfall, he says, a mystic dread falls upon him.

His funeral, which was nothing less than a national event, best showed how deeply his work had affected the hearts of his country

men.

Upon the appearance of Dostoyevsky's earlier works, Tourguenief had been loud in his expressions of admiration and sympathy. Memoirs of the House of the Dead had elicited his special praise, but subsequent divergence of views and Dostoyevsky's jealousy alienated his sympathy nor could he admire the hyperesthesia of this "psychological mole." Tourguenief readily encouraged and aided young writers, and was habitually generous to possible rivals, and it was in such expansive spirit he recognized the promise and admired the merits of Tolstoi's earliest productions. Feeling his death was at hand, Tourguenief wrote thus to him "I write expressly to tell you how happy I am to have been your contemporary, and to make you my last and most urgent entreaty. Resume, my dear friend, your literary labours! You have this gift from there whence all we have comes. Oh! how happy I should feel if I thought you would do as I ask . . . . My dear friend, great writer of our land of Russia, grant me this prayer!" Born in 1828, Count Leo Tolstoi passed his early years on the patrimonial estate near Toula, under the care of foreign tutors, and thence went to the University of Kazan. With his brother he entered a regiment of artillery, then (1851) stationed in the Caucasus. Here he probably composed his Cossack Tale.' The

1 The Cossacks, a tale of the Caucasus in 1852. Translated. Lond., 1878. Tolstoi, who was on service in the Crimean war, describes the scenes he witnessed in his works, "Sevastopol in December-in Mayin August" (1853-60). In "Childhood-Adolescence" (1851-53) and "Youth" (1860-62), he has given some reflection of his own mental development gradually tending to scepticism. Childhood and Youth. London, 1863. Other works are The Felling of the Wood, The Happiness of the Family, Two Hussars, Albert, Lucerne, Three Deaths,

work bears traces of Byronism, which does not extend to Tolstoi's later works, which are realistic, and in which he consistently discards style, and even formal art. The hero, Olénin, perhaps a reflection of the author, is a young Russian officer, who, tired of the artificiality and conventions of civilized life, seeks new sensations and more powerful excitements in the romantic region which had inspired Lermontof and Poushkin. He falls in love with Marianna, the daughter of his Cossack host; but he is doomed to disillusion and disappointment. The difference between the heart of the civilized European and that of the Asiatic, as well as of the falseness of the Oriental types drawn by Western writers, is brought out.

War and Peace (1872),' reaching 1,800 pages, is less a novel than a panorama of Russian society during the wars with Napoleon (1805-1815). in which Tolstoi's father bore a distinguished part. But it is a panorama in which each figure is limned with the finish and detail of a miniature; in which historical personages, e.g., Napoleon I., Alexander I., Koutouzof, Speransky, occupy almost as much canvas as the imaginary characters; and in which the slight thread of narrative serves to link together chapters of history, politics, and philosophy.

In Anna Karenin (1877), Tolstoi in very similar style presents a picture of contemporary Russian society. The work appeared in fragments in the Viestnik Evropy, and occupied the author for several years, being completed only in 1877. It includes the history of an adulterous liaison, the blame for which seems mainly to be laid to the neglect and indifference of the husband absorbed in ambitious schemes, but who eventually recognizes his fault, and forgives his wife. The story embodies an indirect plea for the absolute indissolubility of marriage which the author maintains explicitly in subsequent works. Tolstoi has written a "Confession," but besides this his novels must largely reflect the workings of his own mind. He has shared the experience of so many of his lettered countrymen, of the nihilistic void of despair,

Nikolinka. He has recently written a number of short stories of an allegorical character, which are distributed among the poorer classes.

La Guerre et la Paix. Roman historique, traduit par une Russe 3 tom., Paris, 1884 and 1845, 8vo.

Katia. Traduction du Comte d'Hauterive; Paris, Perrin et Cir, 1886.

2 Anna Karenine, traduit du Russe. 2 tom., Paris, 1886, 2nd ed.

he has also felt like many of them a mystical or religious reaction. Eager to clutch at anything tangible in the sea of bewildering doubt and negation, he has apotheosized the peasant in his stolid endurance and uncomplainingness as a type of duty, of action, superior to the man of thought. He puts his principle into practice. During his long retirement in the country, he spent much of his time working at manual labour, wasting and contemning his own gifts, and heedless of Tourguenief's farewell appeal. Like Dostoyevsky, whose only book in his captivity was a Testament, he came to feel the power of the maxims of the Gospel, of which, however, his own interpretation is a wayward communistic travesty. With splendid arrogance he writes: "Everything tended to convince me that I had now found the true interpretation of Christ's doctrine; but it was a long time before I could get used to the strange thought that after so many men had professed the doctrine of Christ during 1800 years, and had devoted their lives to the study of His teachings, it was given to me to discover His doctrine as something altogether new.”1 He would abolish human tribunals, punishments, wars, and even forcible resistance to evil. Like Dostoyevsky, he exalts patience and resignation at the expense of reason, and at the peril of society itself, and preaches a mild anarchism. He shares, but interprets the characteristic Russian despondency, and sees in the dumb endurance and uncomplaining toil of the Moujick the best and truest Christian virtue.

Popular fiction at all times, but especially the modern novel, and, above all, for the reasons we have touched on under Dostoyevsky, is of inestimable value in judging of national character and temper. It is somewhat remarkable that while in France, Germany, and even North America a large number of Russian novels have been translated, comparatively little interest is evinced in England in the literature of the great nation whom we jostle at so many points of the world. The following are some of the works which have been chiefly used here, and will prove useful to the student desirous to follow up the subject:Galakhof, Istoria rousskoi Slovesnosti. St. Petersburg, 1880. Porfirief, Istoria rousskoi Slovesnosti. Kazan, 1886. Polevoi, Istoria rousskoi Literatoury. St. Petersburg, 1883.

A French translation of a number of Tolstoi's short popular tales has been published by Perrin et Cie, under the general title, A la recherche du bonheur, which indicates vaguely their tenour.