His first comedy, _Pictures of Family Happiness_, was written in 1847, and three years later appeared his first drama, _We shall settle it among Ourselves_, or _The Bankrupt_, which at once gave him the reputation of a great dramatic writer. It was printed in a review, and had a great vogue all over Russia (the actor Sadóvskiy read it widely in private houses at Moscow), but it was not allowed to be put on the stage. The Moscow merchants even lodged a complaint with Nicholas I. against the author, and Ostróvskiy was dismissed from the civil service and placed under police supervision as a suspect. Only many years later, four years after Alexander II. had succeeded his father--that is, in 1860--was the drama played at Moscow, and even then the censorship insisted upon introducing at the end of it a police officer to represent the triumph of justice over the wickedness of the bankrupt. For the next five years Ostróvskiy published nothing, but then he brought out in close succession (1853 and 1854) two dramas of remarkable power--_Don’t take a seat in other People’s Sledges_, and _Poverty--No Vice_. The subject of the former was not new: a girl from a tradesman’s family runs away with a nobleman, who abandons and ill-treats her when he realises that she will get from her father neither pardon nor money. But this subject was treated with such freshness, and the characters were depicted in positions so well-chosen, that for its literary and stage-qualities the drama is one of the best Ostróvskiy has written. As to _Poverty--No Vice_, it produced a tremendous impression all over Russia. We see in it a family of the old type, the head of which is a rich merchant--a man who is wont to impose his will upon all his surroundings and has no other conception of life. He has, however, taken outwardly to “civilisation”--that is, to restaurant-civilisation: he dresses in the fashions of Western Europe and tries to follow Western customs in his house--at least in the presence of the acquaintances he makes in the fashionable restaurants. Nevertheless, his wife is his slave, and his household trembles at his voice. He has a daughter who loves, and is loved by, one of her father’s clerks, Mítya, a most timid but honest young man, and the mother would like her daughter to marry this clerk; but the father has made the acquaintance of a more or less wealthy aged man--a sort of Armenian money-lender, who dresses according to the latest fashion, drinks champagne instead of rye-whiskey, and therefore plays among Moscow merchants a certain rôle of authority in questions of fashion and rules of propriety. To this man the girl must be married. She is saved, however, by the interference of her uncle, Lubím Tortsóff. Lubím was once rich, like his brother, but he was not satisfied with the dull Philistine life of his surroundings, and seeing no way out of it and into a better social atmosphere, he took to drink--to unmitigated drunkenness, such as was to be seen in olden