At the same time, Griboyedov's famous comedy, "Intelligence Comes to Grief," which the censorship forbade to be produced or even published, was being circulated in manuscript form. This comedy, a veritable masterpiece, has for its hero a man named Chatsky, who was condemned as a madman by the aristocratic society of Moscow on account of his independent spirit and patriotic sentiments. It is true that in all of these works the authors hardly attack important personages or the essential bases of political organization. The functionaries and proprietors of Gogol's works are "petites gens," and the civic pathos of Chatsky aims at certain individuals and not at the national institutions. But these attacks, cleverly veiling the general conditions of Russian life, led the intelligent reader to meditate on certain questions, and it also permitted satire to live through the most painful periods. Later, with the coming of the reforms of Alexander II, satire manifested itself more openly in the works of Saltykov, who was not afraid to use all his talent in scourging, with his biting sarcasm, violence and arbitrariness. Another salient trait of Russian literature is its tendency toward realism, the germ of which can be seen even in the most old-fashioned works, when, following the precepts of the West, they were taken up first with pseudo-classicism, and then with the romantic spirit which followed. Pseudo-classicism had but few worthy representatives in Russia, if we omit the poet Derzhavin, whom Pushkin accused of having a poor knowledge of his mother tongue, and whose monotonous work shows signs of genius only here and there.