she will be true to her kind and high-minded husband. Thus the drama ends. After the production of his masterpiece, followed a notable poetic tragedy, “Boris Godunov,” in which may be discerned the author’s admiration for the methods of Shakespeare, to whom he turned, yet not slavishly, after freeing himself from the overshadowing Byron. It is inevitable that we should speculate upon the splendid work which might have come from the pen of this greatest of Russian poets had he not fallen in his prime. The story is sad and sordid enough. In 1831, having been restored to imperial favor, he had married the beautiful Natalya Nikolaevna Gontcharoff, and they plunged into society, loaded with recognition by the court. He had been married but five years when society began to gossip about “the lovely Madame Pushkin” and Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, the natural son of the Dutch minister to Russia. Pushkin attached no blame to his wife for the indiscretions of the infatuated young chevalier of the Guards, but challenged him nevertheless. Dantes averted a meeting by marrying Pushkin’s sister. Still the gossip persisted, and eventually, being refused access to the Pushkin home, Dantes made his persecutions so patent, and was so seconded by the elder Hekkeren, that the poet challenged the father. The son intervened, adopted the quarrel, and in a duel at St. Petersburg Pushkin was killed, January 29, 1837, being only thirty-eight years old. The last six years of Pushkin’s life established his claim to greatness not only as a poet and a dramatist, but also as a master of Russian prose. We may not term him a novelist, but as a writer of prose tales he set a new mark in the literature of his land. When we recall that it was in the first years of that significant decade, 1830-1840, that Poe, Balzac, and Mérimée perfected and brought to its modern form the short-story, we shall realize what a great forward step was being made in Russia at the very same time when Pushkin produced his “Prose Tales.” His longer tales, “A Prisoner of the Caucasus” and “The Captain’s Daughter,” exhibit little plot, but they are notable impressionistic stories, full of rich and effective coloring. Two of his shorter stories I outline, both on account of their intrinsic interest and for the fact that they illustrate the romantic vein which runs through all of Pushkin’s work. Else how could he ever have turned to Byron? Gogol, a contemporary of Pushkin and in some senses his successor, was the father of Russian realism. The two may be said to be the joint parents of Russian fiction. “The Queen of Spades” is like a “Weird Tale” by Hoffmann, or a conception of Poe’s. It ranks as one of the world’s great short-stories. At the house of a cavalry officer, several young Russians are gambling. One of them asks Herman why he never plays. He replies, “Play interests me greatly, but I hardly care to sacrifice the necessities of life for uncertain superfluities.”