worshiping foreign manners and customs, and plead for the national simplicity of olden days.
Griboyedoff (1795-1829), in his "Misfortune from Intelligence," that heart-rending cry of a man that loved his country only too well, had for his direct object to combat the baneful influence of the fad for aping everything French.
Lermontoff (1814-1841) forges his deadliest darts, pours out the fiercest venom of his "iron verse, suffused with bitterness and anger," against the triviality and shallowness of the society of his time. The Eternal Judge has given him the omniscience of a prophet:—
"Of love and truth I then commenced
To herald undefiled teachings;
Then all my fellow-men incensed.
At me stones hurled for my preachings."
At eighteen, Gogol (1809-1852) writes in his letters: "I have consecrated my whole life to doing good," "all my powers to nothing but the advantage of the fatherland," "almost since the age of mental immaturity I burned with the unquenchable zeal of making my life indispensable for the welfare of the State; I eagerly sought to contribute the slightest benefit whatever."
Turgenieff (1818-1883), "the Westerner," whom Tame considered "one of the most perfect artists the world has produced since the classic period," on the very threshold of his literary career takes his Hannibalian oath never to make peace with his "enemy," to fight to a finish that enemy—the institution of serfdom—and actually leaves Russia the more effectively to strike his blows. His "Annals of a Sportsman" (1847-1851), an infinitely superior artistic achievement to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," produced the effect aimed at by the author. Alexander II, who avowed the strong impression Turgenieff's sketches had made on him, emancipated the serfs in 1861.
