futility even to
all the inspired simplicities and thunderous veracities of Tolstoy. We
feel that a man cannot make himself simple merely by warring on
complexity; we feel, indeed, in our saner moments, that a man cannot
make himself simple at all. A self-conscious simplicity may well be far
more intrinsically ornate than luxury itself. Indeed, a great deal of
the pomp and sumptuousness of the world's history was simple in the
truest sense. It was born of an almost babyish receptiveness; it was the
work of men who had eyes to wonder and men who had ears to hear.

"King Solomon brought merchant men
Because of his desire
With peacocks, apes, and ivory,
From Tarshish unto Tyre."

But this proceeding was not a part of the wisdom of Solomon; it was a
part of his folly--I had almost said of his innocence. Tolstoy, we feel,
would not be content with hurling satire and denunciation at "Solomon in
all his glory." With fierce and unimpeachable logic he would go a step
further. He would spend days and nights in the meadows stripping the
shameless crimson coronals off the lilies of the field.

The new collection of "Tales from Tolstoy," translated and edited by Mr.
R. Nisbet Bain, is calculated to draw particular attention to this
ethical and ascetic side of Tolstoy's work. In one sense, and that the
deepest sense, the work of Tolstoy is, of course, a genuine and noble
appeal to simplicity. The narrow notion that an artist may not teach is
pretty well exploded by now. But the truth of the matter is, that an
artist teaches far more by his mere background and properties, his
landscape, his costume, his idiom and technique--all the part of his
work, in short, of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by
the elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly imagines to be his
opinions. The real distinction between the ethics of high art and the
ethics of manufactured and didactic art lies in the simple fact that the
bad fable has a moral, while the good fable is a moral. And the real
moral of Tolstoy comes out constantly in these stories, the great moral
which lies at the heart of all his work, of which he is probably
unconscious, and of which it is quite likely that he would vehemently
disapprove. The curious cold white light of morning that shines over all
the tales, the folklore simplicity with which "a man or a woman" are
spoken of without further identification, the love--one might almost say
the lust--fo