because Vronsky seems an inadequate object of her passion;
though it is true that with the figure of Vronsky Tolstoy was
curiously unsuccessful. Vronsky was his one failure--there is surely
no other in all his gallery to match it. The spoilt child of the
world, but a friendly soul, and a romantic and a patient lover--and a
type fashioned by conditions that Tolstoy, of course, knew by
heart--why should Tolstoy manage to make so little of him? It is
unfortunate, for when Anna is stirred by the sight of him and his
all-conquering speciosity, any reader is sure to protest. Tolstoy
should have created Vronsky with a more certain touch before he
allowed him to cause such a disturbance. But this is a minor matter,
and it would count for little if the figure of Anna were all it should
be. Vronsky's importance in the story is his importance to Anna, and
her view of him is a part of _her_; and he might be left lightly
treated on his own account, the author might be content to indicate
him rather summarily, so long as Anna had full attention. It returns
upon that again; if Anna's own life were really fashioned, Vronsky's
effect would be _there_, and the independent effect he happens to
make, or to fail to make, on the reader would be an irrelevant affair.
Tolstoy's vital failure is not with him, but with her, in the prelude
of his book.

It may be that there is something of the same kind to be seen in
another of his novels, in Resurrection, though Resurrection is more
like a fragment of an epic than a novel. It cannot be said that in
that tremendous book Tolstoy pictured the rending of a man's soul by
sudden enlightenment, striking in upon him unexpectedly, against his
will, and destroying his established life--and that is apparently the
subject in the author's mind. It is the woman, the accidental woman
through whom the stroke is delivered, who is actually in the middle of
the book; it is _her_ epic much rather than the man's, and Tolstoy did
not succeed in placing him where he clearly meant him to be. The man's
conversion from the selfishness of his commonplace prosperity is not
much more than a fact assumed at the beginning of the story. It
happens, Tolstoy says it happens, and the man's life is changed; and
thereafter the sombre epic proceeds. But the unrolling of the story
has no bearing upon the revolution wrought in the man; that is
complete, as soon as he flings over his past and follows the convoy of
prisoners into Siber