great writers.
Nor, in the more peculiar case of writers who attempt to impose the
illusion of unity, is the danger serious. The apparatus is always
visible; they cannot afford to do without the paraphernalia of argument
which supplies the place of what is lacking in their presentation. The
obvious instance of this legerdemain is Zola; a less obvious, and
therefore more interesting example is Balzac.

To attempt the more difficult problem. What is most peculiar to
Tchehov's unity is that it is far more nakedly aesthetic than that of
most of the great writers before him. Other writers of a rank equal to
his--and there are not so very many--have felt the need to shift their
angle of vision until they could perceive an all-embracing unity; but
they were not satisfied with this. They felt, and obeyed, the further
need of taking an attitude towards the unity they saw They approved or
disapproved, accepted or rejected it. It would be perhaps more accurate
to say that they gave or refused their endorsement. They appealed to
some other element than their own sense of beauty for the final verdict
on their discovery; they asked whether it was just or good.

The distinguishing mark of Tchehov is that he is satisfied with the
unity he discovers. Its uniqueness is sufficient for him. It does not
occur to him to demand that it should be otherwise or better. The act of
comprehension is accompanied by an instantaneous act of acceptance. He
is like a man who contemplates a perfect work of art; but the work of
creation has been his, and has consisted in the gradual adjustment of
his vision until he could see the frustration of human destinies and the
arbitrary infliction of pain as processes no less inevitable, natural,
and beautiful than the flowering of a plant. Not that Tchehov is a
greater artist than any of his great predecessors; he is merely more
wholly an artist, which is a very different thing. There is in him less
admixture of preoccupations that are not purely aesthetic, and probably
for this reason he has less creative vigour than any other artist of
equal rank. It seems as though artists, like cattle and fruit trees,
need a good deal of crossing with substantial foreign elements, in order
to be very vigorous and very fruitful. Tchehov has the virtues and the
shortcomings of the pure case.

I do not wish to be understood as saying that Tchehov is a manifestation
of _l'art pour l'art_, because in any commonly accepted sense