Alexander Kuprin has been hailed as an anarchist, a free-love preacher, a social reformer, a cynic, a retrograde, and what not. He may be all these, or none, or more. Of all the Russian writers he is the only true, unaffected Dionysian. His love for women, for wine, for horses, for nature—in a word, for life, is spontaneous and elemental. None of the hectic morbidity of the consumptive Artzibashev. Kuprin is a healthy artist with an enormous eye. He sees to the bottom the mind of man and animal, of the thief and the intellectual, of the empty military officer and of the street-woman, of the artist and of the gambler, and he makes us see what he sees with a cheerful gracefulness, with no other purpose but the presentation of his sweetheart, life. His novel, _The Duel_, stirred Russian society as a vigorous indictment of militarism, a picture of the dehumanizing garrison life. Kuprin guffawed at that accusation over a glass of vodka, as he is usually drawn by cartoonists. Far be it from him to advocate or condemn. He rejoices in all his heroes, whether they be garrison dummies, or artistic pickpockets (_The Outrage_), or Japanese spies (_Captain Ribnikov_), or petty philistines (_The River of Life_). He floats upon the “river of life”, observes, absorbs, delights, and chuckles at the very fact of his existence. “Even if I were to fall under a railway train, and were left lying on the line with broken and bleeding limbs, and any one were to ask me if life were beautiful, I should none the less, and even by summoning my last remains of strength, answer enthusiastically, ‘Ah, yes, even now life is glorious!’” (_The Duel_). From the charming, lithe, joyous Kuprin I pass reluctantly to a book on the lugubrious “cruel genius”, Dostoevsky[6]. It is deplorable that the publisher who has given us the excellent translation of Dostoevsky by Constance Garnett should throw on the market such a mediocrity as Mr. Soloviev’s work, as if there were not excellent books on the novelist written by Merezhkovsky, Volynsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Veresayev! Mr. Soloviev presents the accepted view of Dostoevsky as the preacher of repentance and atonement, the retrograde, the pillar of church and autocracy. Superficially, the view appears to be correct. Dig deeper into the chaotic, epileptical soul of the author of _Crime and Punishment_, gaze into the abysses of the dual characters of Raskolnikov, Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin, Svidrigailov, the Karamazovs, fling your imagination into the hellish crater of the novelist’s mind, and Mr. Soloviev’s symmetrical structure evaporates like mist. Again I ask, Why are such useless school-exercises reproduced by intelligent publishers? Why should such a fine translator as Mr. Hogarth waste his energy on puerilities?