rtaking far beyond his powers. In this
case, for instance, despising, as usual, what he could do best, he
planned a huge work, in nine volumes, on the history of the Middle
Ages. Fortunately, his preparatory studies in the history of Little
Russia led him to write his splendid epic, which is a composition of the
highest art, "Taras Bulba," and diverted him from his ill-digested
project.

He began to recognize that literary work was not merely a pastime, but
his moral duty; and the first result of this conviction was his great
play "The Inspector," finished in April, 1836. The authorities refused
to produce it, but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard about it, read it, and
gave imperative orders that it should be put on the stage, upholding
Gogol with rapturous delight. Everybody--officials, the police, literary
people, merchants--attacked the author. They raged at this comedy,
refused to recognize their too lifelike portraits, and still endeavored
to have the play prohibited. Gogol's health and spirits failed under
this persecution, and he fled abroad, whence thereafter he returned to
Russia only at long intervals and for brief visits, chiefly to Moscow,
where most of his faithful friends resided. He traveled a great deal,
but spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him
perennially poor despite the eventual and complete success, both
artistically and financially, of "The Inspector," and of Part I. of
"Dead Souls," which would have enabled him to live in comfort. He was
wont to say that he could see Russia plainly only when he was at a
distance from her, and in a measure, he proved the truth of his
contention in the first volume of "Dead Souls." Thereby he justified
Pushkin's expectations in giving him the subject of that work, which he
hoped would enable Gogol to depict the classes and localities of the
fatherland in the concentrated form of types. But he lived too long in
Rome. The Russian mind in general is much inclined to mysticism, and
Little Russia, in Gogol's boyhood, was exceptionally permeated with
exaggerated religious sentiment. Mysticism seems to be peculiarly fatal
to Russian writers of eminence; we have seen how Von Vizin and Zhukovsky
were affected toward the end of their lives; we have a typical and even
more pronounced example of it in a somewhat different form at the
present time in Count L. N. Tolstoy. Lermontoff had inclined in that
direction. Hence, it is not surprising that the mo