With regard to Tolstoy the question can be answered without the slightest hesitation. Time, which has inflicted such mournful damage on so many great reputations in the last twenty-five years, has not only left the fame of Tolstoy’s masterpieces unimpaired, but has increased our sense of their greatness. The question arises, whose work forms the complement to that of Tolstoy, and shares his undisputed dominion of modern Russian literature? Is it Tourgeniev? In Russia at the present day the answer would be “No,” it is not Tourgeniev. And in Europe, students of Russian literature who are acquainted with the Russian language--as we see in M. Emile Haumant’s study of Tourgeniev’s life and work, and in Professor Brückner’s history of Russian literature--would also answer in the negative, although their denial would be less emphatic and not perhaps unqualified. The other giant, the complement of Tolstoy, almost any Russian critic of the present day without hesitation would pronounce to be Dostoievsky; and the foreign critic who is thoroughly acquainted with Dostoievsky’s work cannot but agree with him. I propose to go more fully into the question of the merits and demerits of Dostoievsky later on; but it is impossible not to mention him here, because the very existence of his work powerfully affects our judgment when we come to look at that of his contemporaries. We can no more ignore his presence and his influence than we could ignore the presence of a colossal fresco by Leonardo da Vinci in a room in which there were only two other religious pictures, one by Rembrandt and one by Vandyck. For any one who is familiar with Dostoievsky, and has felt his tremendous influence, cannot look at the work of his contemporaries with the same eyes as before. To such a one, the rising of Dostoievsky’s red and troubled planet, while causing the rays of Tourgeniev’s serene star to pale, leaves the rays of Tolstoy’s orb undiminished and undimmed. Tolstoy and Dostoievsky shine in the firmament of Russian literature like two planets, one of them as radiant as the planet Jupiter, the other as ominous as the planet Mars. Beside either of these the light of Tourgeniev twinkles, pure indeed, and full of pearly lustre, like the moon faintly seen in the east at the end of an autumnal day. * * * * *