Another and more insidious line of critical detraction has been followed by M. Haumant in _Ivan Tourguénief, la vie et l'œuvre_, a volume, painstaking and well documented, assuredly of great interest to the student. Intent on his efforts to track down to their source "the origins of Turgenev's thoughts," the French critic has forgotten to applaud the aesthetic appeal, and the very perfection of these creations! It is as though a critic of Keats, in trying to discover "the sources" of "Hyperion" or "An Ode to a Grecian Urn," had neglected to appraise the imperishable essence of these masterpieces. Thus M. Haumant, searching profoundly for "echoes" in Turgenev's "inner voices," gravely informs us that in _The Brigadier_ Turgenev has constructed "a Russian Werther"! while a passage in _Phantoms_, it appears, is inspired by a passage in De Quincey's _Confessions of an Opium-Eater_. A page is devoted to the discussion of the latter conjecture,[3] but nothing at all is said as to the unique spiritual beauty and the haunting atmosphere of these tales. And _A Lear of the Steppes_, that masterpiece, incomparable in its force of genius, is dismissed in half a line! The effect of such "comments," both on those who know and those who do not know their Turgenev, is equally unfortunate. For it really looks, but of course one may be wrong, as though the French critic, like his latter-day Russian _confrères_, did not recognize a masterpiece when he sees one. Has not, indeed, a Russian literary teacher, A. D. Alfyorov, publicly declared that "Turgenev's work is, of course, only of historical importance." [3] Haumant, p. 174. But enough! Indeed one may well be asked, Is it necessary to defend so great a classic as Turgenev against modern criticisms of this character? Perhaps it is not a mere waste of time, for certain reasons. Turgenev's supremacy, as artist, accepted by the _élite_ in France, Renan, Taine, Flaubert, Maupassant, etc., and by the best European critics, such as Brandes, was impaired in Russian eyes by his growing unpopularity after 1867. Brückner says justly: "To the intelligent Russian, without a free press, without liberty of assembly, without the right to free expression of opinion, literature became the last refuge of his freedom of thought, the only means of propagating higher ideas. He expected and demanded of his country's literature not merely aesthetic recreation; he placed it at the service of everything noble and good, of his aspiration, of the enlightenment and emancipation of the spirit. _Hence the striking partiality, nay, unfairness, displayed by the Russians towards the most perfect works of their own literature when they did not answer to the claims or the expectations of their party or their day. A purely aesthetic handling of the subject would not gain it full acceptance._"