entirely dissimilar poets, Tennyson and Browning. Much of Mr. Baring's
language is an echo of Merezhkovski; but this Russian critic, while
loving Dostoevski more than Turgenev, was not at all blind to the
latter's supreme qualities. Listen to Mr. Baring:--

"He possesses a certain quality which is different in kind from those
of any other writer, a power of seeming to get nearer to the unknown,
to what lies beyond the flesh, which is perhaps the secret of his
amazing strength; and, besides this, he has certain great qualities
which other writers, and notably other Russian writers, possess also;
but he has them in so far higher a degree that when seen with other
writers he annihilates them. The combination of this difference in
kind and this difference in degree makes something so strong and so
tremendous, that it is not to be wondered at when we find many critics
saying that Dostoevski is not only the greatest of all Russian
writers, but one of the greatest writers that the world has ever seen.
I am not exaggerating when I say that such views are held; for
instance, Professor Bruckner, a most level-headed critic, in his
learned and exhaustive survey of Russian literature, says that it is
not in "Faust," but rather in "Crime and Punishment," that the whole
grief of mankind takes hold of us.

"Even making allowance for the enthusiasm of his admirers, it is true
to say that almost any Russian judge of literature at the present day
would place Dostoevski as being equal to Tolstoi and immeasurably
above Turgenev; in fact, the ordinary Russian critic at the present
day no more dreams of comparing Turgenev with Dostoevski, than it
would occur to an Englishman to compare Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte
Bronte."