ese stronger
writers; but in Russia, where Turgenev's work has the advantage of
being read in the original, it had an asset which ensured it a
permanent and safe harbour, above and beyond the fluctuations of
literary taste, the strife of political parties, and the conflict of
social ideals; and that was its art, its poetry, its style, which
ensured it a lasting and imperishable niche among the great classics
of Russian literature. And there it stands now. Turgenev's work in
Russia is no longer disputed or a subject of dispute. It is taken for
granted; and, whatever the younger generation will read and admire,
they will always read and admire Turgenev first. His work is a
necessary part of the intellectual baggage of any educated man and,
especially, of the educated adolescent.

The position of Tennyson in England offers in a sense a parallel to
that of Turgenev in Russia. Tennyson, like Turgenev, enjoyed during
his lifetime not only the popularity of the masses, but the
appreciation of all that was most eclectic in the country. Then a
reaction set in. Now I believe the young generation think nothing of
Tennyson at all. And yet nothing is so sure as his permanent place in
English literature; and that permanent place is secured to him by his
incomparable diction. So it is with Turgenev. One cannot expect the
younger generation to be wildly excited about Turgenev's ideas,
characters, and problems. They belong to an epoch which is dead. At
the same time, one cannot help thinking that the most advanced of the
symbolist writers would not have been sorry had he happened by chance
to write _Bezhin Meadow_ and the _Poems in Prose_. Just so one cannot
help thinking that the most modern of our poets, had he by accident
written _The Revenge_ or _Tears, Idle Tears_, would not have thrown
them in the fire!

There is, indeed, something in common between Tennyson and Turgenev.
They both have something mid-Victorian in them. They are both idyllic,
and both of them landscape-lovers and lords of language. They neither
of them had any very striking message to preach; they both of them
seem to halt, except on rare occasions, on the threshold of passion;
they both of them have a rare stamp of nobility; and in both of them
there is an element of banality. They both seem to a certain extent to
be shut off from the world by the trees of old parks, where cultivated
people are enjoying the air and the flowers and the shade, and where
between t