“And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain; and they besought Him that He would suffer them to enter into them. And He suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake and were choked. When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. “Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind; and they were afraid. They also which saw it, told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils, was healed.” The book, as I have said, undoubtedly reveals Dostoievsky’s powers at their highest pitch, in the sense that nowhere in the whole range of his work do we find such isolated scenes of power; scenes which are, so to speak, white hot with the fire of his soul; and characters in which he has concentrated the whole dæmonic force of his personality, and the whole blinding strength of his insight. On the other hand, it shows us, as I added, more clearly than any other of his books, the nature and the extent of his limitations. It is almost too full of characters and incidents; the incidents are crowded together in an incredibly short space of time, the whole action of the book, which is a remarkably long one, occupying only the space of a few days, while to the description of one morning enough space is allotted to make a bulky English novel. Again, the narrative is somewhat disconnected. You can sometimes scarcely see the wood for the trees. Of course, these objections are in a sense hypercritical, because, as far as my experience goes, any one who takes up this book finds it impossible to put it down until he has read it to the very end, so enthralling is the mere interest of the story, so powerful the grip of the characters. I therefore only suggest these criticisms for those who wish to form an idea of the net result of Dostoievsky’s artistic scope and achievement.