true mirror of life and be of
service to life. A Russian author, to achieve the highest recognition,
must be a thinker also. He need not necessarily be a finished artist.
Everything is subordinated to two main requirements--humanitarian
ideals and fidelity to life. This is the secret of the marvellous
simplicity of Russian-literary art. Before the supreme function of
literature, the Russian writer stands awed and humbled. He knows he
cannot cover up poverty of thought, poverty of spirit and lack of
sincerity by rhetorical tricks or verbal cleverness. And if he
possesses the two essential requirements, the simplest language will
suffice.

These qualities are exemplified at their best by Turgenev and Tolstoy.
They both had a strong social consciousness; they both grappled with
the problems of human welfare; they were both artists in the larger
sense, that is, in their truthful representation of life, Turgenev was
an artist also in the narrower sense--in a keen appreciation Of form.
Thoroughly Occidental in his tastes, he sought the regeneration of
Russia in radical progress along the lines of European democracy.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, sought the salvation of mankind in a
return to the primitive life and primitive Christian religion.

The very first work of importance by Turgenev, _A Sportsman's
Sketches_, dealt with the question of serfdom, and it wielded
tremendous influence in bringing about its abolition. Almost every
succeeding book of his, from _Rudin_ through _Fathers and Sons_ to
_Virgin Soil_, presented vivid pictures of contemporary Russian
society, with its problems, the clash of ideas between the old and the
new generations, and the struggles, the aspirations and the thoughts
that engrossed the advanced youth of Russia; so that his collected
works form a remarkable literary record of the successive movements of
Russian society in a period of preparation, fraught with epochal
significance, which culminated in the overthrow of Czarism and the
inauguration of a new and true democracy, marking the beginning,
perhaps, of a radical transformation the world over.

"The greatest writer of Russia." That is Turgenev's estimate of
Tolstoy. "A second Shakespeare!" was Flaubert's enthusiastic outburst.
The Frenchman's comparison is not wholly illuminating. The one point
of resemblance between the two authors is simply in the tremendous
magnitude of their genius. Each is a Colossus. Each creates a whole
world of cha