iitch.

Who does not know that extraordinary _Death of Ivan Iliitch_? It is an
achievement in realism: not the realism of externals and trivial
details--though of this there is enough for art if not for the common
Zolaphyte--but the higher and better sort, the realism which deals with
mental and spiritual conditions, the realism of _Othello_ and _Hamlet_.
There are many deaths in literature, but there is none, I think, in which
the gradual processes of dissolution are analysed and presented with such
knowledge, such force, such terrible directness, as here. The result is
appalling, but the final impression is one of encouragement and
consolation. Here, as everywhere, Tolstoi appeals to the primitive
nature of man, and the issue is what he wishes it to be. Not for him is
the barren pessimism of the latter-day French rhapsodist in fiction, and
the last word of his study, inexorable till then, is a word of hope and
faith.

War and Peace.

Incomparably his greatest book, however, is _War and Peace_. It is the
true Russian epic; alike in the vastness of its scope and in the
completeness of its execution. It tells the story of the great conflict
between Koutouzoff and Russia and Napoleon and France, it begins some
years before Austerlitz, and it ends when Borodino and Moscow are already
ancient history. The canvas is immense: the crowd of figures and the
world of incidents almost bewildering. It is not a complete success. In
many places the mystic has got the better of the artist: he is
responsible for theories of the art of war which, advanced with the
greatest confidence, are disproved by the simple narrative of events; and
he has made a study of Napoleon in which, for the first and only time in
all his work, he appears as an intemperate advocate. But when all is
said in blame so much remains to praise that one scarce knows where to
begin. Tolstoi's theory of war is mystical and untenable, no doubt; but
his pictures of warfare are incomparably good. None has felt and
reproduced as he has done what may be called the intimacy of battle--the
feeling of the individual soldier, the passion and excitement, the terror
and the fury, that taken collectively make up the influence which
represents the advance or the retreat of an army in combat. But also, in
a far greater degree, none has dealt so wonderfully with the vaster
incidents, the more tremendous issues. His Austerlitz is magnificent;
his Borodino is