I explained that at first sight it appeared to Englishmen incredible that Russian peasants, who were known to be so backward in many things, should have taken a fancy to a work which was considered as a touchstone of rare literary taste in England. I alluded to the difficulties of the classicism of the style—the scholarly quality of the verse. “But is it written in verse?” he asked. And when I explained to him that “Paradise Lost” was as literary a work as the Æneid he perfectly understood the incredulity of the English public. As a matter of fact, it is not at all difficult to understand and even to explain why the Russian peasant likes “Paradise Lost.” It is popular in exactly the same way as Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” has always been popular in England. Was it not Dr. Johnson who said that Bunyan’s work was great because, while it appealed to the most refined critical palate, it was understood and enjoyed by the simplest of men, by babes and sucklings? This remark applies to the case of “Paradise Lost” and the Russian peasant. The fact therefore is not surprising, as would be, for instance, the admiration of Tommy Atkins for a translation of Lucretius. It is no more and no less surprising than the popularity of Bunyan or of any epic story or fairy tale. When people laugh and say that these tastes are the inventions of essayists they forget that the epics of the world were the supply resulting from the demand caused by the deeply-rooted desire of human nature for stories—long stories of heroic deeds in verse; the further you go back the more plainly this demand and supply is manifest. Therefore in Russia among the peasants, a great many of whom cannot read, the desire for epics is strong at this moment. And those who can read prefer an epic tale to a modern novel. Besides this, “Paradise Lost” appeals to the peasants because it is not only epic, full of fantasy and episode, but also because it is religious, and, like children, they prefer a story to be true. In countries where few people read or write, memory flourishes, and in Russian villages there are regular tellers of fairy tales (_skashi_) who hand down from generation to generation fairy tales of incredible length in prose and in verse.