That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot
Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,
Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
To incorporate the whole great sun it loves
From the inch-height whence it looks and longs!"

No one can read a book like this without being better for it, and
without loving its author.

It is unfortunate that Dostoevski did not learn from his first little
masterpiece the great virtue of compression. This story is short, but
it is long enough; the whole history of two lives, so far as their
spiritual aspect is concerned, is fully given in these few pages. The
besetting sin of Dostoevski is endless garrulity with its accompanying
demon of incoherence: in later years he yielded to that, as he did to
other temptations, and it finally mastered him. He was never to write
again a work of art that had organic unity.

Like all the great Russian novelists, Dostoevski went to school to
Gogol. The influence of his teacher is evident throughout "Poor Folk."
The hero is almost an imitation of the man in Gogol's short story,
"The Cloak," affording another striking example of the germinal power
of that immortal work. Dostoevski seemed fully to realise his debt to
Gogol, and in particular to "The Cloak;" for in "Poor Folk," one
entire letter is taken up with a description of Makar's emotions after
reading that extraordinary tale. Makar assumes that it is a
description of himself. "Why, I hardly dare show myself in the
streets! Everything is so accurately described that one's very gait is
recognisable."