we have called "Olga," which has a commencement and a conclusion, with an unbroken interest, and which we give first, on that account. In point of fact, it was nearly the last written and quite the last discovered; her sister had supposed that all had been found and had no notion of the existence of the MS. till she came upon it at the bottom of a drawer turned out merely to clear it of rubbish. It was mixed and crossed with verses on other subjects, and overlaid, as usual, with a crowd of delicate, mysterious girl-faces.
The date is fixed by the subject as 1881.[1] She had been deeply impressed with the state of Russia, the terrible moral results of unlimited power to the ruler, the tragic struggles of the Nihilists, and the murder of the Czar. But she laid the work aside, because the imaginary situation, to which no precise period was assigned, obviously suggested a contemporary event too tragical for use as mere literary capital, and thus hurt alike her artistic and her human sensibilities.
- ↑ The assassination of Alexander II. of Russia took place March 13, 1881.
107
