and the novelists of the first rank. Educated Russia is fully aware of
this. Nobody disputes Leskov his place, nor denies him his supreme
artistic talent, his humour, his vividness, his colour, his satire,
the depth of his feeling, the richness of his invention. In spite of
this, there is no Russian writer who has so acutely suffered from the
didactic and partisan quality of Russian criticism.

His literary career began in 1860. Like Saltykov, he paints the period
of transition that followed the epoch of the great Reforms. In spite
of this, as late as 1902, no critical biography, no serious work of
criticism, had been devoted to his books. All Russia had read him, but
literary criticism had ignored him. It is as if English literary
criticism had ignored Dickens until 1900.

The reason of this neglect is not far to seek. Saltykov was an
independent thinker; he belonged to no literary or political camp; he
criticized the partisans of both camps with equal courage; and the
partisans could not and did not forgive him. Like Saltykov, Leskov saw
what was going on in Russia; with penetrating insight and observation
he realized the evils of the old order; like Saltykov, he was filled
with indignation, and perhaps to a greater degree than Saltykov, he
was filled with pity. But, whereas Saltykov's work was purely
destructive--an onslaught of brooms in the Augean stables--Leskov
begins where Saltykov ends. Like Saltykov and like Gogol before him,
the old order inspires him with laughter, sometimes with bitter
laughter, at the absurdities of the old regime and its results; but he
does not confine himself to destructive irony and sapping satire. With
PISEMSKY, another writer of first-class talent, of the same epoch,
Leskov was the first Russian novelist--Griboyedov had already
anticipated such criticism in _Gore ot Uma_, in his delineation of
Chatsky,--to have the courage to criticize the reformers, the men of
the new epoch; and his criticism was not only negative but creative;
he realized that everything must be "reformed altogether." He then
asked himself whether the new men, who were engaged in the task of
reform, were equal to their task. He came to the conclusion not only
that they were inadequate, but that they were setting about the
business the wrong way, and he had the courage to say so. He was the
first Russian novelist to say he disbelieved in Liberals, although he
believed in Liberalism; and this was a sentiment which