The Spanish realists of the same period are the height of the disagreeable. The most repugnant of them all is Pereda. When I read him, I feel as if I were riding on a balky, vicious mule, which proceeds at an uncomfortable little trot, and then, all of a sudden, cuts stilted capers like a circus horse. THE RUSSIANS _Dostoievski_ One hundred years hence Dostoievsky's appearance in literature will be hailed as one of the most extraordinary events of the nineteenth century. Among the spiritual fauna of Europe, his place will be that of the Diplodocus. _Tolstoi_ A number of years ago I was in the habit of visiting the Ateneo, and I used to argue there with the habitués, who in general have succeeded in damming up the channels through which other men receive ideas. "To my mind, Tolstoi is a Greek," I observed. "He is serene, clear, his characters are god-like; all they think of are their love affairs, their passions. They are never called upon to face the acute problem of subsistence, which is fundamental with us." "Utter nonsense! There is nothing Greek about Tolstoi," declared everybody. Some years later at a celebration in honour of Tolstoi, Anatole France chanced to remark: "Tolstoi is a Greek." When this fell from Anatole France, the obstruction in the channels through which these gentlemen of the Ateneo received their ideas ceased for the moment to exist, and they began to believe that, after all, Tolstoi might very well have something of the Greek in him. THE CRITICS _Sainte Beuve_ Sainte Beuve writes as if he had always said the last word, as if he were precisely at the needle of the scales. Yet I feel that this writer is not as infallible as he thinks. His interest lies in his anecdote, in his malevolent insinuation, in his bawdry. Beyond these, he has the same Mediterranean features as the rest of us. _Taine_ Hippolyte Taine is also one of those persons who think they understand everything. And there are times when he understands nothing. His _History of English Literature_, which makes an effort to be broad and generous, is one of the pettiest, most niggardly histories ever written anywhere. His articles on Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Dickens have been fabricated by a French professor, which is to say that they are among the most wooden productions of the universities of Europe. _Ruskin_ He impresses me as the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a Congress of Tourists. _Croce_ The esthetic theory of Benedetto Croce has proved another delusion to me. Rather than an esthetic theory, it is a study of esthetic theories. As in most Latin productions, the fundamental question is not discussed therein, but the method of approaching that question.