method to follow. Gorky, the least artistic, the least Westernized of writers, sent me first of all to Turgenev. It is a fact that foreigners begin their study of Russian by reading Turgenev. It is he who initiates them into the secrets of the most complex, the most finely graded, the most varied and most subtle of modern languages—perhaps of all languages the sole heir to the genius of the Greek tongue.
But Turgenev is still more; he is a master of European literature. He has neither the inspiration of Gogol, nor the epic grandeur or the prophetic breath of Tolstoy, nor the profound tragedy of Dostoevsky, nor the democratic sentiment of Gorky and Chekhov. His horizon is as limited and monotonous as the horizon of the steppes. He works with certain ever-recurring types of lovers, proprietors, peasants, intellectuals, and revolutionaries. If his talent remains personal and original, if he has not (whatever may be said against him) copied from his predecessors, he is for ever copying himself. But in his limited world, which is his own, Turgenev is without a rival. The best judges in all countries—Mérimée, Taine, and Hennequin in France; Brandes in Denmark; Henry James in America; Galsworthy in Eng-
