ssian, who is connected with the
Art Theatre at Moscow, said to me that he feared the new interest
taken by English intellectuals with regard to Russian literature and
Russian art. He was delighted, of course, that they should be
interested in Russian affairs, but he feared their interest was in
danger of being crystallized in a false shape and directed into
erroneous channels.

This ignorance will always remain until English people go to Russia
and learn to know the Russian people at first hand. It is not enough
to be acquainted with a certain number of Russian writers; I say a
certain number advisedly, because, although it is true that such
writers as Tolstoy and Turgenev have long been naturalized in England,
it is equally true that some of the greatest and most typical of
Russian authors have not yet been translated.

There is in England no complete translation of Pushkin. This is much
the same as though there were in Russia no complete translation of
Shakespeare or Milton. I do not mean by this that Pushkin is as great
a poet as Shakespeare or Milton, but I do mean that he is the most
national and the most important of all Russian writers. There is no
translation of Saltykov, the greatest of Russian satirists; there is
no complete translation of Leskov, one of her greatest novelists,
while Russian criticism and philosophy, as well as almost the whole of
Russian poetry, is completely beyond the ken of England. The knowledge
of what Russian civilisation, with its glorious fruit of literature,
consists in, is still a sealed book so far as England is concerned.

M. B.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I THE ORIGINS 9

II THE NEW AGE--PUSHKIN 30

III LERMONTOV 101

IV THE AGE OF PROSE 126

V THE EPOCH OF REFORM 159

VI TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY 196

VII THE SECOND AGE OF POETRY 226

CONCLUSION 243

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 251

INDEX 254

_The following volumes of kindred interest have already been
p