Gogol's grandfather, who figures as "Rudy Panko, the bee-farmer," in the two volumes of Little Russian stories which established his fame, narrated to him at least one-half of those stories. His father, also, who represented the modern spirit, was an inimitable narrator of comic stories, and the talents of father and grandfather rendered their house the popular center of a very extensive neighborhood. At school Gogol did not distinguish himself, but he wrote a good deal, all of an imitative character. After leaving school, it was with difficulty that he secured a place as copying-clerk, at a wretched salary, in St. Petersburg. He promptly resigned this when fame came, and secured the appointment as professor of history. But he was a hopelessly incompetent professor of history, despite his soaring ambitions, both on account of his lack of scholarship and the natural bent of his mind. The literary men who had obtained the position for him had discerned his immense talent in a perfectly new style of writing; and after failure had convinced him that heavy, scientific work was not in his line, he recognized the fact himself, and decided to devote himself to the sort of work for which nature had intended him. The first volume of his "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikanka" appeared at the end of 1831, and had an immense success. The second volume, "Mirgorod," was equally successful, all the more so, as it introduced, together with the pure merriment which had characterized the earlier tales, and the realism which was his specialty, so to speak, a new element--pathos; "laughter piercing through a mist of tears." In this style "Old-fashioned Gentry"[20] and "How Ivan Ivanovitch Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovitch" are famous examples. Success always turned Gogol's head, and he immediately aspired to some undertaking far beyond his powers. In this case, for instance, despising, as usual, what he could do best, he planned a huge work, in nine volumes, on the history of the Middle Ages. Fortunately, his preparatory studies in the history of Little Russia led him to write his splendid epic, which is a composition of the highest art, "Taras Bulba," and diverted him from his ill-digested project.