Now, one certainly feels, on reading Nekrásoff, that he had difficulty in writing his verses. There is nothing in his poetry similar to the easiness with which Púshkin used the forms of versification for expressing his thoughts, nor is there any approach to the musical harmony of Lérmontoff’s verse or A. K. Tolstóy’s. Even in his best poems there are lines which are not agreeable to the ear on account of their wooden and clumsy form; but you feel that these unhappy verses could be improved by the change of a few words, without the beauty of the images in which the feelings are expressed being altered by that. One certainly feels that Nekrásoff was not master enough of his words and his rhymes; but there is not one single poetical image which does not suit the whole idea of the poem, or which strikes the reader as a dissonance, or is not beautiful; while in some of his verses Nekrásoff has certainly succeeded in combining a very high degree of poetical inspiration with great beauty of form. It must not be forgotten that the _Yambs_ of Barbier, and the _Châtiments_ of Victor Hugo also leave, here and there, much to be desired as regards form. Nekrásoff was a most unequal writer, but one of the above-named critics has pointed out that even amidst his most unpoetical “poem”--the one in which he describes in very poor verses the printing office of a newspaper--the moment that he touches upon the sufferings of the workingman there come in twelve lines which for the beauty of poetical images and musicalness, connected with their inner force, have few equals in the whole of Russian literature. When we estimate a poet, there is something general in his poetry which we either love or pass by indifferently, and to reduce literary criticism exclusively to the analysis of the beauty of the poet’s verses or to the correspondence between “idea and form” is surely to immensely reduce its value. Everyone will recognise that Tennyson possessed a wonderful beauty of form, and yet he cannot be considered as superior to Shelley, for the simple reason that the general tenor of the latter’s ideas was so much superior to the general tenor of Tennyson’s. It is on the general contents of his poetry that Nekrásoff’s superiority rests. We have had in Russia several poets who also wrote upon social subjects or the duties of a citizen--I need only mention Pleschéeff and Mináyeff--and they attained sometimes, from the versifier’s point of view, a higher beauty of form than Nekrásoff. But in whatever Nekrásoff wrote there is an inner force which you do not find in either of these poets, and this force suggests to him images which are rightly considered as pearls of Russian poetry.