racters, from kings and princes and ladies to servants and
maids and peasants. But how vastly divergent the angle of approach!
Anna Karenina may have all the subtle womanly charm of an Olivia or a
Portia, but how different her trials. Shakespeare could not have
treated Anna's problems at all. Anna could not have appeared in his
pages except as a sinning Gertrude, the mother of Hamlet. Shakespeare
had all the prejudices of his age. He accepted the world as it is with
its absurd moralities, its conventions and institutions and social
classes. A gravedigger is naturally inferior to a lord, and if he is
to be presented at all, he must come on as a clown. The people are
always a mob, the rabble. Tolstoy, is the revolutionist, the
iconoclast. He has the completest independence of mind. He utterly
refuses to accept established opinions just because they are
established. He probes into the right and wrong of things. His is a
broad, generous universal democracy, his is a comprehensive sympathy,
his an absolute incapacity to evaluate human beings according to
station, rank or profession, or any standard but that of spiritual
worth. In all this he was a complete contrast to Shakespeare. Each of
the two men was like a creature of a higher world, possessed of
supernatural endowments. Their omniscience of all things human, their
insight into the hiddenmost springs of men's actions appear
miraculous. But Shakespeare makes the impression of detachment from
his works. The works do not reveal the man; while in Tolstoy the
greatness of the man blends with the greatness of the genius. Tolstoy
was no mere oracle uttering profundities he wot not of. As the social,
religious and moral tracts that he wrote in the latter period of his
life are instinct with a literary beauty of which he never could
divest himself, and which gave an artistic value even to his sermons,
so his earlier novels show a profound concern for the welfare of
society, a broad, humanitarian spirit, a bigness of soul that included
prince and pauper alike.

Is this extravagant praise? Then let me echo William Dean Howells: "I
know very well that I do not speak of Tolstoy's books in measured
terms; I cannot."

The Russian writers so far considered have made valuable contributions
to the short story; but, with the exception of Pushkin, whose
reputation rests chiefly upon his poetry, their best work, generally,
was in the field of the long novel. It was the novel that gave Rus