ply the standard to himself is of
no particular account.

Though Tchehov's genius is, strictly speaking, inimitable, it deserves a
much exacter study than it has yet received. The publication of this
volume of his letters[8] hardly affords the occasion for that; but it
does afford an opportunity for the examination of some of the chief
constituents of his perfect art. These touch us nearly because--we
insist again--the supreme interest of Tchehov is that he is the only
great modern artist in prose. He belongs, as we have said, to us. If he
is great, then he is great not least in virtue of qualities which we may
aspire to possess; if he is an ideal, he is an ideal to which we can
refer ourselves, He had been saturated in all the disillusions which we
regard as peculiarly our own, and every quality which is distinctive of
the epoch of consciousness in which we are living now is reflected in
him--and yet, miracle of miracles, he was a great artist. He did not rub
his cheeks to produce a spurious colour of health; he did not profess
beliefs which he could not maintain; he did not seek a reputation for
universal wisdom, nor indulge himself in self-gratifying dreams of a
millennium which he alone had the ability to control. He was and wanted
to be nothing in particular, and yet, as we read these letters of his,
we feel gradually form within ourselves the conviction that he was a
hero--more than that, _the_ hero of our time.

[Footnote 8: _Letters of Anton Tchehov_. Translated by Constance
Garnett (Chatto & Windus).]

It is significant that, in reading Tchehov's letters, we do not
consider him under the aspect of an artist. We are inevitably fascinated
by his character as a man, one who, by efforts which we have most
frequently to divine for ourselves from his reticences, worked on the
infinitely complex material of the modern mind and soul, and made it in
himself a definite, positive, and most lovable thing. He did not throw
in his hand in face of his manifold bewilderments; he did not fly for
refuge to institutions in which he did not believe; he risked
everything, in Russia, by having no particular faith in revolution and
saying so. In every conjuncture of his life that we can trace in his
letters he behaved squarely by himself and, since he is our great
exemplar, by us. He refused to march under any political banner--a
thing, let it be remembered, of almost inconceivable courage in his
country; he submitted to sav