compelled the reluctant Government tardily to do its duty and mitigate a disaster it could no longer deny.
But perhaps Tolstoi has done even greater service to his beloved muzhiks with his pen than with his purse. Between 1880 and 1896 he composed for their benefit that series of simple, touching stories, so truly humane, so deeply Christian, and also, despite his own intentions, such exquisite masterpieces of realistic art in the truest sense of the word, some of the best of which were selected to form my former volume: “Tales from Tolstoi.” We learn from his letter to Dembinsky in 1886, what moved Tolstoi thus to cater for the humblest of his readers: “These millions of poor Russians who just know their letters stand before us like so many hungry little daws with wide-open mouths crying to us: ‘Gospoda[1] native writers! throw into these mouths of ours spiritual food worthy of you and us, nourish us hungry ones with the living literary word!’—And the simple and honest Russian people deserves that we should respond to its call.”
During the years immediately preceding the publication of these further translations Tolstoi lived for the most part at Yasnaya Polyana, in the bosom of his family, working with and for his tenants continually, and yet finding time to answer daily the thousands of letters which reached him from all parts of the world, asking for his counsel and assistance in every imaginable sort of difficulty. He has been, with perhaps the single exception of Fr. John of
- ↑ Gentlemen.
45
