All through Tourgeniev’s life, in spite of his frequent quarrels with Tolstoy, he never ceased to admire the works of his rival. Tourgeniev had the gift of admiration. Tolstoy is absolutely devoid of it. The “Lucifer” spirit in him refuses to bow down before Shakespeare or Beethoven, simply because it is incapable of bending at all. To justify this want, this incapacity to admire the great masterpieces of the world, Tolstoy wrote a book called _What is Art?_ in which he condemned theories he had himself enunciated years before. In this, and in a book on Shakespeare, he treats all art, the very greatest, as if it were in the same category with that of æsthetes who confine themselves to prattling of “Art for Art’s sake.” Beethoven he brushes aside because, he says, such music can only appeal to specialists. “What proportion of the world’s population,” he asks, “have ever heard the Ninth Symphony or seen ‘King Lear’? And how many of them enjoyed the one or the other?” If these things be the highest art, and yet the bulk of men live without them, and do not need them, then the highest art lacks all claim to such respect as Tolstoy is ready to accord to art. In commenting on this, Mr. Aylmer Maude writes: “The case of the specialists, when Tolstoy calls in question the merits of ‘King Lear’ or of the Ninth Symphony, is an easy one.” But the fallacy does not lie here. The fallacy lies in thinking the matter is a case for specialists at all. It is not a case for specialists. Beethoven’s later quartettes may be a case for the specialist, just as the obscurer passages in Shakespeare may be a case for the specialist. This does not alter the fact that the whole of the German nation, and multitudes of people outside Germany, meet together to hear Beethoven’s symphonies played, and enjoy them. It does not alter the fact that Shakespeare’s plays are translated into every language and enjoyed, and, when they are performed, are enjoyed by the simplest and the most uneducated people. The highest receipts are obtained at the Théâtre Français on holidays and feast days, when the plays of Molière are given. Tolstoy leaves out the fact that very great art, such as that of Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Beethoven, Mozart, appeals at the same time, and possibly for different reasons, to the highly trained specialist and to the most uncultivated ignoramus. This, Dr. Johnson points out, is the great merit of Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_: the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and a child knows nothing more amusing. This is also true of _Paradise Lost_, an appreciation of which is held in England to be the highest criterion of scholarship. And _Paradise Lost_, translated into simple prose, is sold in cheap editions, with coloured pictures, all over Russia,[14] and greedily read by the peasants, who have no idea that it is a poem, but enjoy it as a tale of fantastic adventure and miraculous events. It appeals at the same