reless scenes had ended along with my
young years."

With the strict censorship that existed in the reign of Czar Nicholas I,
it required powerful influence to obtain permission for the production
of the comedy. This Gogol received through the instrumentality of
his friend, Zhukovsky, who succeeded in gaining the Czar's personal
intercession. Nicholas himself was present at the first production in
April, 1836, and laughed and applauded, and is said to have remarked,
"Everybody gets it, and I most of all."

Naturally official Russia did not relish this innovation in dramatic
art, and indignation ran high among them and their supporters. Bulgarin
led the attack. Everything that is usually said against a new departure
in literature or art was said against the Revizor. It was not original.
It was improbable, impossible, coarse, vulgar; lacked plot. It turned
on a stale anecdote that everybody knew. It was a rank farce. The
characters were mere caricatures. "What sort of a town was it that did
not hold a single honest soul?"

Gogol's sensitive nature shrank before the tempest that burst upon him,
and he fled from his enemies all the way out of Russia. "Do what you
please about presenting the play in Moscow," he writes to Shchepkin four
days after its first production in St. Petersburg. "I am not going to
bother about it. I am sick of the play and all the fussing over it. It
produced a great noisy effect. All are against me... they abuse me and
go to see it. No tickets can be obtained for the fourth performance."

But the best literary talent of Russia, with Pushkin and Bielinsky, the
greatest critic Russia has produced, at the head, ranged itself on his
side.

Nicolay Vasilyevich Gogol was born in Sorochintzy, government of
Poltava, in 1809. His father was a Little Russian, or Ukrainian,
landowner, who exhibited considerable talent as a playwright and actor.
Gogol was educated at home until the age of ten, then went to Niezhin,
where he entered the gymnasium in 1821. Here he edited a students'
manuscript magazine called the Star, and later founded a students'
theatre, for which he was both manager and actor. It achieved such
success that it was patronized by the general public.

In 1829 Gogol went to St. Petersburg, where he thought of becoming
an actor, but he finally gave up the idea and took a position as a
subordinate government clerk. His real literary career began in 1830
with the publication of a series of stor