His own standpoint was that of the Artist, and each man must be judged
by his main purpose. Here is where he differs most sharply from
Tolstoi, Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admire
him more than they love him. To him the truth about life was always
the main thing. His novels were never tracts, he wrote them with the
most painstaking care, and in his whole career he never produced a
pot-boiler. His work is invariably marked by that high seriousness
which Arnold worshipped, and love of his art was his main inspiration.
He had a gift for condensation, and a willingness to cultivate it,
such as no other novelist has shown. It is safe to say that his novels
tell more about human nature in less space than any other novels in
the world. Small as they are, they are inexhaustible, and always
reveal beauty unsuspected on the previous reading.

His stories are not stories of incident, but stories of character. The
extraordinary interest that they arouse is confined almost entirely to
our interest in his men and women; the plot, the narrative, the events
are always secondary; he imitated no other novelist, and no other can
imitate him. For this very reason, he can never enjoy the popularity
of Scott or Dumas; he will always be caviare to the general. Henry
James said of him, that he was particularly a favourite with people of
cultivated taste, and that nothing cultivates the taste better than
reading him. It is a surprising proof of the large number of readers
who have good taste, that his novels met with instant acclaim, and
that he enjoyed an enormous reputation during his whole career. After
the publication of his first book, "A Sportsman's Sketches," he was
generally regarded in Russia as her foremost writer, a position
maintained until his death; his novels were translated into French and
English very soon after their appearance, and a few days after his
death, the London "Athenaeum" remarked, "Europe has been unanimous in