how often one is tempted to
say this in the annals of Russian literature--and yet, one wonders!

What we possess of the second part of _Dead Souls_ is in Gogol's best
vein, and of course one cannot help bitterly regretting that the rest
was destroyed or possibly never written; but one wonders whether, had
he not had within him the intensity of feeling which led him
ultimately to renounce art, he would have been the artist that he was;
whether he would have been capable of creating so many-coloured a
world of characters, and whether the soil out of which those works
grew was not in reality the kind of soil out of which religious
renunciation was at last bound to flower. However that may be, Gogol
left behind him a rich inheritance. He is one of the great humorists
of European literature, and whoever gives England a really fine
translation of his work, will do his country a service. Merimee places
Gogol among the best _English_ humorists. His humour and his pathos
were closely allied; but there is no acidity in his irony. His work
may sometimes sadden you, but (as in the case of Krylov's two pigeons)
it will never bore you, and it will never leave you with a feeling of
stale disgust or a taste as of sharp alum, for his work is based on
charity, and it has in its form and accent the precious gift of charm.
Gogol is an author who will always be loved even as much as he is
admired, and his stories are a boon to the young; to many a Russian
boy and girl the golden gates of romance have been opened by Gogol,
the destroyer of Russian romanticism, the inaugurator of Russian
realism.

Side by side with fiction, another element grew up in this age of
prose, namely criticism. Karamzin in the twenties had been the first
to introduce literary criticism, and critical appreciations of
Pushkin's work appeared from time to time in the _European Messenger_.
PRINCE VYAZEMSKY, whose literary activity lasted from 1808-78, was a
critic as well as a poet and a satirist, a fine example of the type of
great Russian nobles so frequent in Russian books, who were not only
saturated with culture but enriched literature with their work, and
carried on the tradition of cool, clear wit, clean expression, and
winged phrase that we find in Griboyedov. POLEVOY, a self-educated man
of humble extraction, was the first professional journalist, and
created the tradition of violent and fiery polemics, which has lasted
till this day in Russian journalism. Bu