18. I had hoped at first to be able to give you a few passages from this noblest of epic poems which might give you some idea of its wild, thrilling beauty: the jolly life at the syetch; the sudden transformation of the frolicking, dancing, gambling crowd into a well-disciplined army of fierce warriors, which strikes terrors into the hearts of the Poles. I hoped to be able to give you Gogol's own account of the slaying of Andrei, his youngest son, by Bulba himself, because, bewitched by a pair of fair eyes, he became traitor to the Cossaks. I wished to quote to you the stoic death, under the very eyes of his father, of Ostap, the oldest son, torn as he is alive to pieces, not a sound escaping his lips, but at the very last moment, disheartened at the sea of hostile faces about him, crying only, "Father, seest thou all this?" I wished to quote to you Bulba's own terrible death, nailed alive to a tree, which is set on fire under him; the old hero, still intent on the salvation of his little band, while the smoke envelops him, cries, as he beholds the movement of the enemy, "To the shore, comrades, to the shore! Take the path to the left!" But I found I should have to quote to you the entire book; for there is not a single page of this poem from which beauty does not shine forth with dazzling radiance. Homer often nods in the Iliad, but in "Taras Bulba" Gogol never nods. And as the painter of old on being asked to remove the curtain that the picture might be seen replied, "The curtain _is_ the picture," so can I only say to you, "Read 'Taras Bulba,' and it shall be its own commentary unto you!"