Such was the doughty champion of the nationalists through good and evil fortune. His writings on musical questions form only a small part of his literary output, the result of over sixty years of indefatigable industry; for he was an authority on painting, architecture and design. Like Nestor, the faithful chronicler of mediæval Russia, he worked early and late. He did great service to native art by carefully collecting at the Imperial Public Library all the original manuscript scores of the Russian composers, their correspondence, and every document that might afterwards serve historians of the movement. He was the first to write an important monograph on Glinka, and this, together with his book on Borodin, his exhaustive articles on Dargomijsky and Moussorgsky, and his general surveys of musical progress in Russia, are indispensable sources of first-hand information for those who would study the question of Russian music _à fonds_.[38] As a critic, time has proved that, in spite of his ardent crusade on behalf of modernism and nationality, his judgments were usually sound; as an historian he was painstaking and accurate; as regards his appreciation of contemporary art, he showed a remarkable _flair_ for latent talent, and sensed originality even when deeply overlaid by crudity of thought and imperfect workmanship. He was apparently the first to perceive the true genius and power concealed under the foppishness and dilettantism of Moussorgsky's early manhood. He considered that neither Balakirev, Cui, nor Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated the composer of _Boris Godounov_ at his full value. He upheld him against all contemptuous and adverse criticism, and the ultimate triumph of Moussorgsky's works was one of the articles in his artistic creed. CHAPTER X MOUSSORGSKY