We have seen that Pushkin, towards the end of his career, entered upon this new path, with his prose tales, "The Captain's Daughter," "Dubrovsky," and so forth, and throughout the '30's of the nineteenth century, the romance and novel came, more and more, to occupy the most prominent place in Russian literature. We may pass over the rather long list of second-class writers who adventured in this field (of whom Zagoskin and Marlinsky are most frequently referred to), and devote our attention to the man who has been repeatedly called "the father of modern Russian realism," Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol (1809-1852). He is credited with having created all the types which we encounter in the works of the great novelists who followed him, and this is almost literally true, at least so far as the male characters are concerned. In particular, this applies to his famous "Dead Souls," which contains if not the condensed characterization in full of these types, at least the readily recognized germs of them. But in this respect, his early Little Russian Stories, "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikanka," and the companion volume, "Mirgorod," as well as his famous comedy, "The Inspector," must not be forgotten, for they contributed their full quota. Pushkin was one of Gogol's earliest and most ardent admirers, and it was because he recognized the latter's phenomenal talent in seizing the national types that he gave to him the idea for "Dead Souls," which he had intended to use himself. Thanks to his own genius (as well as to the atmosphere of the epoch in which he lived), he solved for himself, quite independently of any foreign influence, the problem of bringing Russian literature down from the clouds to everyday real life. He realized that the world was no longer living in a sort of modern epic, as it had been during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic campaigns, and that literature must conform to the altered conditions. Naturally, in his new quest after truth, Gogol-Yanovsky (to give him his full name) mingled romanticism and realism at first. But he soon discovered the true path. He was born and reared in Little Russia, at Sorotchinsky, Government of Poltava, and was separated only by two generations from the famous epoch of the Zaporozhian kazaks, who lived (as their name implies) below the rapids of the Dniepr. He has depicted their life in his magnificent novel "Taras Bulba." His grandfather had been the regimental scribe--a post of honor--of that kazak army, and the spirit of the Zaporozhian kazaks still lingered over the land which was full of legends, fervent, superstitious piety, and poetry.