He suffered from discouragement but long before his death men of all parties recognized that he was the chief teacher, poet, and novelist of the province. They realized his incorruptible character, his wide knowledge and his literary talent. He was not the peer of the incomparable Shevchenko but next to him he stood out as the most important talent in Ukrainian literature, the greatest scholar, and the one man who could see the problems of his people and the path on which they should go. His enormous funeral bore token to the esteem in which he was held and to the work which he had done during the unremitting years of journalism. Franko worked hard. His life was uneventful. It was not filled with surprising and unusual episodes but as scholar, critic, poet, novelist and teacher he deserved well of Ukraine and was the glory of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. CHAPTER ELEVEN LESYA UKRAINKA The age of realism gradually gave way to neo-romanticism. After a period of time in which literature was bound within the strict limits of a photographic reproduction of nature and of social life, the authors gradually came to demand the liberty of expressing their thoughts in their own way and of choosing such subjects as they desired. There came a renewed emphasis on poetry and a higher technical skill in its production. New devices in metrics and in rhythm were introduced and there appeared authors with the proper talents to master the new devices. Nowhere was this more true than in Russia. The eighties had been a time of discouragement to the Russian intelligentsia but toward the middle of that decade, some of the writers against the opposition of most of the liberal elements demanded for themselves the same liberties that were being claimed in other countries. There came a broadening of themes and an endeavor to get outside the narrow range of contemporary subjects that had preoccupied the literature for forty years. The same influences were working on Ukrainian literature, although the authors who had never bowed the knee to that peculiar type of Russian liberalism which had discounted the Ukrainian right to exist did not have to pass through all the phases of pessimism that their conquerors did. Besides that, the influence of men like Franko and contact with the Ukrainian renaissance in Galicia had to some extent opened direct channels to western Europe which were lacking in St. Petersburg.