reased in
severity as the years went on, until they occurred once a month or
oftener, in consequence of overwork and excessive nervous strain. In
his novel 'The Idiot,' whose hero is an epileptic, he has made a
psychological study of his sensations before and after such fits, and
elsewhere he makes allusions to them.

After serving in the ranks and being promoted officer when he had
finished his term of imprisonment, he returned to Russia in 1859, and
lived first at Tver; afterward, when permitted, in St. Petersburg. The
history of his first marriage--which took place in Siberia, to the
widow of a friend--is told with tolerable accuracy in his 'Humbled and
Insulted,' which also contains a description of his early struggles
and the composition of 'Poor People,' the hero who narrates the tale
of his love and sacrifice being himself. Like that hero, he tried to
facilitate his future wife's marriage to another man. He was married
to his second wife, by whom he had four children, in 1867, and to her
he owed much happiness and material comfort. It will be seen that much
is to be learned concerning our author from his own novels, though it
would hardly be safe to write a biography from them alone. Even in
'Crime and Punishment,' his greatest work in a general way, he
reproduces events of his own life, meditations, wonderfully accurate
descriptions of the third-rate quarter of the town in which he lived
after his return from Siberia, while engaged on some of his numerous
newspaper and magazine enterprises.

This journalistic turn of mind, combined in nearly equal measures with
the literary talent, produced several singular effects. It rendered
his periodical 'Diary of a Writer' the most enormously popular
publication of the day, and a success when previous ventures had
failed, though it consisted entirely of his own views on current
topics of interest, literary questions, and whatever came into his
head. On his novels it had a rather disintegrating effect. Most of
them are of great length, are full of digressions from the point, and
there is often a lack of finish about them which extends not only to
the minor characters but to the style in general. In fact, his style
is neither jewel-like in its brilliancy, as is Turgenieff's, nor has
it the elegance, broken by carelessness, of Tolstoy's. But it was
popular, remarkably well adapted to the class of society which it was
his province to depict, and though diffuse, it is not pos