"Until Apollo calls him to the sacrifice, ignobly the poet is plunged in the cares of this shoddy world; silent is his lyre, cold sleeps his soul, of all the petty children of earth most petty it seems is he." Pisaryev, the critic, was exasperated by these verses. Presumably, if they had not belonged to Poushkin, all the critics along with Pisaryev would have condemned them and their author to oblivion. Suspicious verse! Before Apollo calls to him--the poet is the most insignificant of mortals! In his free hours, the ordinary man finds some more or less distinguished distraction fox himself: he hunts, attends exhibitions of pictures, or the theatre, and finally rests in the bosom of his family. But the poet is incapable of normal existence. Immediately he has finished with Apollo, forgetting all about altars and sacrifices, he proceeds to occupy himself with unworthy objects. Or he abandons himself to the _dolce far niente_, the customary pastime of all favourites of the Muses. Let us here remark that not only all poets, but all writers and artists in general are inclined to lead bad lives. Think what Tolstoy tells us, in _Confession_ and elsewhere, of the best representatives of literature in the fifties. On the whole it is just as Poushkin says in his verses. Whilst he is engaged in composition, an author is a creature of some consequence: apart from this, he is nothing. Why are Apollo and the Muses so remiss? Why do they draw to themselves wayward or vicious votaries, instead of rewarding virtue? We dare not suspect the gods, even the dethroned, of bad intentions. Apollo loved virtuous persons--and yet virtuous persons are evidently mediocre and unfit for the sacred offices. If any man is overcome with a great desire to serve the god of song, let him get rid of his virtues at once. Curious that this truth is so completely unknown to men. They think that through virtue they can truly deserve the favour and choice of Apollo. And since industry is the first virtue, they peg away, morning, noon, and night. Of course, the more they work the less they do. Which really puzzles and annoys them. They even fling aside the sacred arts, and all the labours of a devotee; they give themselves up to idleness and other bad habits. And sometimes it so happens, that just as a man decides that it is all no good, the Muses suddenly visit him. So it was with Dostoevsky and others; Schiller alone managed to get round Apollo. But perhaps it was only his biographers he got round. Germans are so trustful, so easy to deceive. The biographers saw nothing unusual in Schiller's habit of keeping his feet in cold water whilst he worked. No doubt they felt that if the divine poet had lived in the Sahara, where water is precious as gold, and the inspired cannot take a footbath every day, then the speeches of the Marquis of Pola would have lacked half their nobleness, at least. And apparently Schiller was not so wonderfully chaste, if he needed such artificial