to pick up again at the end. Tolstoy has forgotten about this; partly
he has been too much engrossed in his historical picture, and partly he
has fallen into a new manner of handling the loves and fortunes of his
young people. It is now a tale of a group of men and women, with their
cross-play of affinities, a tale of which the centre of interest lies in
the way in which their mutual relations will work out. It is the kind
of story we expect to find in any novel, a drama of young
affections--extraordinarily true and poetic, as Tolstoy traces it, but a
limited affair compared with the theme of his first chapters.

Of that theme there is no continuous development. The details of the
charming career of Natasha, for example, have no bearing on it at all.
Natasha is the delightful girl of her time and of all time, as
Nicholas is the delightful boy, and she runs through the sequence of
moods and love-affairs that she properly should; she is one whose
fancy is quick and who easily follows it. But in the large drama of
which she is a part it is not the actual course of her love-affairs
that has any importance, it is the fact that she has them, that she is
what she is, that every one loves her and that she is ready to love
nearly every one. To do as Tolstoy does, to bring into the middle of
the interest the question whether she will marry this man or
that--especially when it is made as exquisitely interesting as he
makes it--this is to throw away the value that she had and to give her
another of a different sort entirely. At the turning-point of the
book, and long before the turning-point is reached, she is simply the
heroine of a particular story; what she _had_ been--Tolstoy made it
quite clear--was the heroine of a much more general story, when she
came dancing in on the crest of the new wave.

It is a change of attitude and of method on Tolstoy's part. He sees
the facts of his story from a different point of view and represents
them in a fresh light. It does not mean that he modifies their course,
that he forces them in a wrong direction and makes Natasha act in a
manner conflicting with his first idea. She acts and behaves
consistently with her nature, exactly as the story demands that she
should; not one of her impulsive proceedings need be sacrificed. But
it was for Tolstoy, representing them, to behave consistently too, and
to use the facts in accordance with his purpose. He had a reason for
taking them in hand, a desi