exactly the reverse; they take pleasure in pointing out and publishing defects and weaknesses and in ignoring the points of strength. [25] "On arriving at his rooms, Tourguéneff took from his writing-table a roll of paper. I give what he said word for word. "'Listen,' he said. 'Here is "copy" for your paper of an absolutely first-rate kind. This means that I am not its author. The master--for he is a _real_ master--is almost unknown in France, but I assure you, on my soul and conscience, that I do not consider myself worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes.' "Two days afterwards there appeared in the _Temps_, 'Les Souvenirs de Sebastopol,' by Leòn Tolstoi."--_Tourguéneff and his French Circle_, p. 188. [26] "From the letters to Zola ... we shall see with what devotion, sparing neither time nor trouble, Tourguéneff endeavoured to make his friend's books known in Russia. What he did for Zola, he had already done for Gustave Flaubert; afterwards came Goncourt's turn and that of Guy de Maupassant. Never did he take such minute pains to safeguard his own interests, as those he took in the service of his friends."--_Tourguéneff and his French Circle_, by E. Halpérine-Kaminsky, p. 186. [27] Flaubert writing to George Sand says, "What an auditor and what a critic is Turgenev! He has dazzled me by the profundity of his judgments. Ah! if all those who dabble in literary criticism could have heard him, what a lesson! Nothing escapes him. At the end of a piece of a hundred lines he remembers a feeble epithet." The _Poems in Prose_ (1878-1882), this exquisite collection of short, detached descriptions, scenes, memories, and dreams, yields a complete synthesis in brief of the leading elements in Turgenev's own temperament and philosophy. The _Poems in Prose_ are unique in Russian literature, one may say unsurpassed for exquisite felicity of language, and for haunting, rhythmical beauty. Turgenev's characteristic, _the perfect fusion of idea and emotion_, takes shape here in æsthetic contours which challenge the antique. As with all poetry of a high order, the creative emotion cannot be separated from the imperishable form in which it is cast, and ten lines of the original convey what a lengthy commentary would fail to communicate. We therefore quote a translation of three of the _Prose Poems_ from a version which, however careful, must inevitably fall short of the original: "NECESSITAS-VIS-LIBERTAS "A BAS-RELIEF "A tall bony old woman, with iron face and dull fixed look, moves along with long strides, and, with an arm dry as a stick, pushes before her another woman. "This woman--of huge stature, powerful, thickset, with the muscles of a Hercules, with a tiny head set on a bull neck, and blind--in her turn pushes before her a small, thin girl.