Gorky’s genius was meteoric. It flashed in the nineties for a brief period with an extraordinary brilliance, illuminating a theretofore unknown world of “has beens,” of Nietzschean _Bosyaki_. Gorky’s genius, we may say, was elemental and local; it revealed a great spontaneous force on the part of the writer in a peculiar atmosphere, on “the bottom” of life, in the realm of care-free vagabonds. As soon as Gorky trespassed his circle he fell into the pit of mediocrity and began to produce second rate plays, sermon-novels, political sketches, and similar writings that may serve as excellent material for the propaganda-lecturer. The present volume may be looked upon as Gorky’s swan-song, if we consider his ill health; in fact he outlived himself long ago as an artist, and in these _Tales_ we witness the hectic flush of the autumn of his career. The exotic beauty of Italy appears under the pen of the Capri invalid in a morbid, consumptive aspect; the author is too self-conscious, too much aware of the fact of his moribund existence to see the intrinsic in life. The tendency to preach socialism further augments his artistic daltonism, which is particularly evident in the _Russian Tales_. The doomed man casts a weary glance over his distant native land, and he sees there nothing but dismal black, hopeless pettiness and retrogression. The satire is blunt and fails the mark; the allegories are of the vulgar, wood-cut variety. Gorky has been dead for many years. BREAKING INTO AN OPEN DOOR _Plaster Saints, by Israel Zangwill._ [_The Macmillan Company, New York._] The old situation: A revered priest, saint abroad, sinner at home; the old sin—adultery; the old moral about casting the first stone. What is new is the clergyman’s point of view that a “plaster saint” has no right to preach righteousness, that only one who has gone through temptation, sin, and contrition may be fit for the post of God’s shepherd. A sea captain who has never made a voyage—the perfection of ignorance—and you trust him with the ship. You take a youth—the fool of the family for choice—keep him in cotton-wool under a glass case, cram him with Greek and Latin, constrict his neck with a white choker, clap a shovel hat on his sconce, and lo! he is God’s minister! ... When I look at my old sermons, I blush at the impudence and ignorance with which I, an innocent at home, dared to speak of sin to my superiors in sinfulness.