uch. This epic of
the _Molchalins_ of life--the typical officials who cease to be
men--was the story of a great part of the Russian population; and in
its essence, a great deal of it remains true to-day, while all of it
remains artistically enjoyable.

Saltykov continued to write during the whole of his long life. His
field of satire ranges from the days before serfdom to the epoch of
the reforms, extends to the days of the Russo-Turkish War, and passes
the frontier into the West. It is impossible here even to name all his
works; but there is one, written in the decline of his life, which has
a solid historical as well as a rich and varied artistic interest.
This is his _Poshenkhonskaya Starina_; it is practically the history
of his childhood, his upbringing, and the state of affairs which
existed at that time, the life lived by his parents and their
neighbours, the landed proprietors and their serfs. With amazing
impartiality, without exaggeration, and yet with evidences of deep
feeling and passionate indignation, all the more striking from being
both rare and expressed with reserve, he paints on a large and crowded
canvas the life of the masters and their serfs. A long gallery of men
and women is opened to one; tragedy, comedy, farce, all are here--in
fact, life--life as it was then in a remote corner of the country.
Here Saltykov's spite and malice give way to higher strokes of tragic
irony and pity; and the work has dignity as well as power In the bulk
of Saltykov's early work there is much dross, much venom, and much
ephemeral tinsel that has faded; the stuff of this book is stern and
enduring; its subject-matter would not lose a particle of interest in
translation. The Russians have been ungrateful towards Saltykov, and
have been inclined to neglect his work, the lasting element of which
is one of the most original, precious, and remarkable possessions of
Russian literature.

The complement of Saltykov is LESKOV (or, as he originally called
himself, _Stebnitsky_). The character of his work, its reception by
the reading public on the one hand, and by the professional critics on
the other, is one of the most striking object-lessons in the history
of Russian literature and Russian literary criticism. Leskov has been
long ago recognized by educated Russia as a writer of the first rank;
what is best in his work, which is bulky and unequal, has the
unmistakable hall-mark of the classics; he is with Gogol and Saltykov,