he, not pre-eminently possessing any of these,--though he was, as a
matter of fact, of a good Moscow family,--could succeed in engaging
the attention of one person, others would soon follow suit. This he
set about to do by compromising a girl and then abandoning her: and he
acquired the reputation of a Don Juan. Later, when he came back from
the Caucasus, he was treated as a lion. All this does not throw a
pleasant light on his character, more especially as he criticized in
scathing tones the society in which he was anxious to play a part, and
in which he subsequently enjoyed playing a part. But perhaps both
attitudes of mind were sincere. He probably sincerely enjoyed society,
and hankered after success in it; and equally sincerely despised
society and himself for hankering after it.

As he grew older, his pride and the exasperating provocativeness of
his conduct increased to such an extent that he seemed positively
seeking for serious trouble, and for some one whose patience he could
overtax, and on whom he could fasten a quarrel. And this was not slow
to happen.

At the bottom of all this lay no doubt a deep-seated disgust with
himself and with the world in general, and a complete indifference to
life, resulting from large aspirations which could not find an outlet,
and so recoiled upon himself. The epoch, the atmosphere and the
society were the worst possible for his peculiar nature; and the only
fruitful result of the friction between himself and the society and
the established order of his time, was that he was sent to the
Caucasus, which proved to be a source of inspiration for him, as it
had been for Pushkin. One is inclined to say, "If only he had lived
later or longer"; yet it may be doubted whether, had he been born in a
more favourable epoch, either earlier in the milder regime of
Alexander I, or later, in the enthusiastic epoch of the reforms, he
would have been a happier man and produced finer work.

The curious thing is that his work does not reveal an overwhelming
pessimism like Leopardi's, an accent of revolt like Musset's, or of
combat like Byron's; but rather it testifies to a fundamental
indifference to life, a concentrated pride. If it be true that you can
roughly divide the Russian temperament into two types--the type of
the pure fool, such as Dostoyevsky's _Idiot_, and a type of
unconquerable pride, such as Lucifer--then Lermontov is certainly a
fine example of the second type. You feel that