we only
became acquainted with his people while they are talking and acting, I
think they might often seem rather heavy and wooden, harsh of speech
and gesture. Balzac's _general_ knowledge of them, and his power of
offering an impression of what he knows--these are so great that his
people are alive before they begin to act, alive with an energy that
is all-sufficient. Tolstoy's grasp of a human being's whole existence,
of everything that goes to make it, is not as capacious as Balzac's;
but on the other hand he can create a living scene, exquisitely and
easily expressive, out of anything whatever, the lightest trifle of an
incident. If he describes how a child lingered at the foot of the
stairs, teasing an old servant, or how a peasant-woman stood in a
doorway, laughing and calling to the men at work in the farmyard, the
thing becomes a poetic event; in half a page he makes an unforgettable
scene. It suddenly glows and flushes, and its effect in the story is
profound. A passing glimpse of this kind is caught, say, by Anna in
her hungry desperation, by Levin as he wanders and speculates; and
immediately their experience is the fuller by an eloquent memory. The
vividness of the small scene becomes a part of them, for us who read;
it is something added to our impression of their reality. And so the
half-page is not a diversion or an interlude; it speeds the story by
augmenting the tone and the value of the lives that we are watching.
It happens again and again; that is Tolstoy's way of creating a life,
of raising it to its full power by a gradual process of enrichment,
till Anna or Levin is at length a complete being, intimately
understood, ready for the climax of the tale.

But of course it takes time, and it chanced that this deliberation
made a special difficulty in the case of Anna's story. As for Levin,
it was easy to give him ample play; he could be left to emerge and to
assume his place in the book by leisurely degrees, for it is not until
much has passed that his full power is needed. Meanwhile he is a
figure in the crowd, a shy and disappointed suitor, unobtrusively
sympathetic, and there are long opportunities of seeing more of him in
his country solitude. Later on, when his fortunes come to the front
with his marriage, he has shown what he is; he steps fully fashioned
into the drama. With Anna it is very different; her story allows no
such pause, for a growing knowledge of the manner of woman she may be.
She