Stcherbatchev, as a man, produces an unfavorable impression; but this need not imply that he is destitute of talent, and I should be very much obliged to you if you would send me his compositions as soon as they appear. By the way, you have no ground for fancying that Rubinstein will treat them with contempt; to me, at least, he spoke of Stcherbatchev as a very talented young man.... The day before yesterday I received a parcel containing two copies of the Zigzags. I have listened with the utmost attention to two consecutive performances of them, and the interpretation was excellent. To my great regret I have not been able to discover in them the merits about which you wrote to me. I cannot say whether in time original talent will show itself in Stcherbatchev, but at present I can see nothing in him but the “clamor of captive thoughts.” All this has been written under the influence of Schumann’s Carnaval, with a mixture of Liszt’s bizarreries dragged in without motive. It is altogether lacking in ideas; is tedious, strained, and wanting in life. The first page pleased me most; the theme is commonplace, but the working out is interesting. For this you may chop off my head, if you please. I thank you, all the same, for your kindness in sending the music.... In short, pray believe that if I find Mozart’s Don Juan a work of genius, and Dargomijsky’s Don Juan formless and absurd, it is not because Mozart is an authority and others think so, or because Dargomijsky is unknown outside his little circle, but simply because Mozart pleases me, and Dargomijsky does not. Neither do the Zigzags please me. That is the end of the matter!... So not for one moment do I doubt the worthlessness (to my mind) of Maximov’s pictures, I at once placed him in the same category as your favorites, MM. Dargomijsky, Stcherbatchev, Repin, and _tutti quanti_; all those half-baked geniuses filled with spiced stuffing in which you keep detecting the real essence. He also speaks casually of Saint-Saëns and his wife. Stassov sums up the matter this way: “Turgénieff, a great writer, was, as might be expected from a Russian, realistic and sincere in his own novels and tales; but in his tastes and views of art his cosmopolitanism made him the enemy of realism and sincerity in others. In such ideas and in such unaccountable prejudices he elected to spend his whole life.”