table power of depicting national
types, are Gogol's distinguishing characteristics: and these in varying
degrees are precisely the ingredients which have entered into the works
of his successors and rendered Russian literature famous as a school.

In reviewing Gogol's work, we may set aside with but cursory mention his
youthful idyl, written while still in the gymnasium, published
anonymously and overwhelmed with ridicule, 'Hans Kuchel-garten'; his
'Arabesques,' which are useful chiefly as a contribution to the study of
the man and his opinions, not as permanent additions to literature; his
'Extracts from Correspondence with Friends,' which belong to the
sermonizing, clouded period of his life's close; and the divers
'Fragments,' both of prose and dramatic writing, all of which are
conscientiously included in the complete editions of his writings.

The only complete play which he wrote except 'The Inspector' is the
comedy 'Marriage,' which is still acted, though very seldom. It is full
of naturalness and his own peculiar humor, but its subject does not
appeal to the universal public of all lands as nearly as does the plan
of 'The Inspector.' The plot, in brief, is founded on a young girl's
meditations on marriage, and her actions which lead up to and follow
those meditations. The Heroine, desirous of marrying, invokes the aid of
the Match-maker, the old-time matrimonial agent in the Russian merchant
and peasant classes by conventional etiquette. The Match-maker offers
for her consideration several suitable men, all strangers; the Heroine
makes her choice, and is very well content with her suitor. But she
begins to meditate on the future, becomes moved to tears by the thought
of her daughter's possible unhappiness in a hypothetical wretched
marriage in the dim future, and at last, unable to endure this painful
prospect, she evades her betrothed and breaks off the match. While the
characteristic and national touches are keen and true,--precursors of
the vein which Ostrovsky so happily developed later,--the play must
remain a matter of greater interest to Russians than to foreigners.

The interest of 'The Inspector,' on the other hand, is universal:
official negligence and corruption, bribery, masculine boastfulness and
vanity, and feminine qualities to correspond, are the private
prerogatives of no one nation, of no one epoch. The comedy possesses all
the elements of social portraiture and satire without caricature:
co