vast amount of our modern literary production is simply unpardonable.
Writers who would be modern and ignore Tchehov's achievement are,
however much they may persuade themselves that they are devoted artists,
merely engaged in satisfying their vanity or in the exercise of a
profession like any other; for Tchehov is a standard by which modern
literary effort must be measured, and the writer of prose or poetry who
is not sufficiently single-minded to apply the standard to himself is of
no particular account.

Though Tchehov's genius is, strictly speaking, inimitable, it deserves a
much exacter study than it has yet received. The publication of this
volume of his letters[8] hardly affords the occasion for that; but it
does afford an opportunity for the examination of some of the chief
constituents of his perfect art. These touch us nearly because--we
insist again--the supreme interest of Tchehov is that he is the only
great modern artist in prose. He belongs, as we have said, to us. If he
is great, then he is great not least in virtue of qualities which we may
aspire to possess; if he is an ideal, he is an ideal to which we can
refer ourselves, He had been saturated in all the disillusions which we
regard as peculiarly our own, and every quality which is distinctive of
the epoch of consciousness in which we are living now is reflected in
him--and yet, miracle of miracles, he was a great artist. He did not rub
his cheeks to produce a spurious colour of health; he did not profess
beliefs which he could not maintain; he did not seek a reputation for
universal wisdom, nor indulge himself in self-gratifying dreams of a
millennium which he alone had the ability to control. He was and wanted
to be nothing in particular, and yet, as we read these letters of his,
we feel gradually form within ourselves the conviction that he was a
hero--more than that, _the_ hero of our time.