in the sixties, into close contact and friendship with two remarkable men, Tchernyshévskiy and Dobrolúboff, and about this time he wrote his best verses. In 1875 he fell seriously ill, and the next two years his life was simply agony. He died in December, 1877, and thousands of people, especially the University students, followed his body to the grave. Here, over his grave, began the passionate discussion which has never ended, about the merits of Nekrásoff as a poet. While speaking over his grave, Dostoyévskiy put Nekrásoff by the side of Púshkin and Lérmontoff (“higher still than Púshkin and Lérmontoff,” exclaimed some young enthusiast in the crowd), and the question, “Is Nekrásoff a great poet, like Púshkin and Lérmontoff?” has been discussed ever since. Nekrásoff’s poetry played such an important part in my own development, during my youth, that I did not dare trust my own high appreciation of it; and therefore to verify and support my impressions and appreciations I have compared them with those of the Russian critics, Arsénieff, Skabitchévskiy, and Venguéroff (the author of a great biographical dictionary of Russian authors). When we enter the period of adolescence, from sixteen years to twenty, we need to find words to express the aspirations and the higher ideas which begin to wake up in our minds. It is not enough to have these aspirations: we want _words_ to express them. Some will find these words in those of the prayers which they hear in the church; others--and I belonged to their number--will not be satisfied with this expression of their feelings: it will strike them as too vague, and they will look for something else to express in more concrete terms their growing sympathies with mankind and the philosophical questions about the life of the universe which pre-occupy them. They will look for poetry. For me, Goethe on the one side, by his philosophical poetry, and Nekrásoff on the other, by the concrete images in which he expressed his love of the peasant masses, supplied the words which the heart wanted for the expression of its poetical feelings. But this is only a personal remark. The question is, whether Nekrásoff can really be put by the side of Púshkin and Lérmontoff as a great poet. Some people repudiate such a comparison. He was not a poet, they say, because he always wrote with a purpose. However, this reasoning, which is often defended by the pure æsthetics, is evidently incorrect. Shelley also had a purpose, which did not prevent him from being a great poet; Browning has a purpose in a number of his poems, and this did not prevent him from being a great poet. Every great poet has a purpose in most of his poems, and the question is only whether he has found a beautiful form for expressing this purpose, or not. The poet who shall succeed in combining a really beautiful form, _i. e._, impressive images and sonorous verses, with a grand purpose, will be the greatest poet.