dramatic villain, who ought to have worn patent-leather boots and a Spanish cloak. And yet, with all its glaring faults, it is a story the pages of which ought not to be skipped. So far as the narrative goes, one may skip a score of leaves at will ; but in the midst of aimless and weary gabble, pas- sages of extraordinary beauty and uncanny insight strike out with the force of a sudden blow. The influence of Dickens is once more clearly seen in the sickly little girl Nelly, whose strange caprices and flashes of passion are like Goethe's Mignon, but whose bad health and lingering death recall irresistibly Little Nell. They are similar in much more than in name.
Dostoevski told the secrets of his prison-house in his great book Memoirs of a House of the Dead — translated into English with the title Buried Alive. Of the many works that have come from prison- walls to enrich literature, and their number is legion, this is one of the most powerful, because one of the most truthful and sincere. It is not nearly so well written as Oscar Wilde's De Profundis; but one cannot escape the suspicion that this latter masterpiece was a brilliant pose. Dostoevski's House of the Dead is marked by that naïve Russian simplicity that goes not to the reader's head but to his heart. It is at the farthest remove from a well-
constructed novel ; it is indeed simply an irregular,
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