_Revenons a nos moutons_. The _Kreutzer Sonata_ is a terrible story, but like all novels with a purpose, it is inartistic. Othello kills Desdemona without moralising on the sinfulness of marriage, and Pozdnischeff stabs his wife from sheer jealousy. All the preaching is by the way. It might be cut out without affecting the work, and that is its condemnation. When the preacher steps forward the artist retires. And as we are dealing with Tolstoi the preacher we shall go straight to his article in the _Universal Review_. Tolstoi admits that what he now teaches is incompatible with what he taught before. When writing the _Kreutzer Sonata_, he says: "I had not the faintest presentiment that the train of thought I had started would lead me whither it did. I was terrified by my own conclusion, and was at first disposed to reject it; but it was impossible not to hearken to the voice of my reason and my conscience." This is the language of earnest sincerity. The conclusion is this--"Even to contract marriage is, from a Christian point of view, not a progress but a fall. Love and all the states that accompany and follow it, however we may try in prose and verse to prove the contrary, never do and never can facilitate the attainment of an aim worthy of men, but always make it more difficult." This is sufficiently dogmatic. Chapman thought otherwise. Without love All beauties bred in women are in vain, All virtues born in men lie buried; For love informs them as the sun doth colors: And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers, So love, fair shining in the inward man, Brings forth in him the honorable fruits Of valor, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts, Brave resolution and divine discourse. Thus the great Elizabethan. Now for the laureate of the Victorian age. For indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man. Chapman's strain is higher than Tennyson's, but they harmonise. Tolstoi's is a harsher note. He vilifies the flesh to exalt the spirit, as though the two never mingled. He would abolish the springs of life to purify its stream! He bids us see in our passions "foes to be conquered rather than friends to be encouraged." Why not try to establish a just harmony between them? Is there no medium? Must the passions be kings or slaves, in prison or on the throne? "It is thought an injury to reason," wrote Diderot, "to say a word in favor of her rivals; yet it is only the passions, and strong passions, that can lift the soul to great things; without them there is nothing sublime, whether in conduct or in productions--art becomes childish and virtue trivial."