vsky that of Mwyshkin, the pure
fool. Tolstoy could never submit and humble himself. Submission and
humility and resignation are the keynotes and mainsprings of
Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy despised art, and paid no homage to any of the
great names of literature; and this was not only after the so-called
change. As early as 1862, he said that Pushkin and Beethoven could not
please because of their absolute beauty. Dostoyevsky was catholic and
cosmopolitan, and admired the literature of foreign countries--Racine
as well as Shakespeare, Corneille as well as Schiller. The essence of
Tolstoy is a magnificent intolerance. The essence of Dostoyevsky is
sweet reasonableness. Tolstoy dreamed of giving up all he had to the
poor, and of living like a peasant; Dostoyevsky had to share the hard
labour of the lowest class of criminals. Tolstoy theorized on the
distribution of food; but Dostoyevsky was fed like a beggar. Tolstoy
wrote in affluence and at leisure, and re-wrote his books; Dostoyevsky
worked like a literary hack for his daily bread, ever pressed for time
and ever in crying need of money.

These contrasts are not made in disparagement of Tolstoy, but merely
to point out the difference between the two men and between their
circumstances. Tolstoy wrote about himself from the beginning of his
career to the end; nearly all his work is autobiographical, and he
almost always depicts himself in all his books. We know nothing of
Dostoyevsky from his books. He was an altruist, and he loved others
better than himself.

Dostoyevsky's first book, _Poor Folk_, published in 1846, is a
descendant of Gogol's story _The Cloak_, and bears the influence, to a
slight extent, of Gogol. In this, the story of a minor public servant
battling against want, and finding a ray of light in corresponding
with a girl also in poor circumstances, but who ultimately marries a
rich middle-aged man, we already get all Dostoyevsky's peculiar
sweetness; what Stevenson called his "lovely goodness," his almost
intolerable pathos, his love of the disinherited and of the failures
of life. His next book, _Letters from a Dead House_, has a far more
universal interest. It is the record of his prison experiences, which
is of priceless value, not only on account of its radiant moral
beauty, its perpetual discovery of the soul of goodness in things
evil, its human fraternity, its complete absence of egotism and pose,
and its thrilling human interest, but also on account of