to his contemporaries; his ablest and most detailed literary studies deal with his friends and acquaintances, with Ščedrin, Uspenskii, and Nekrasov. It is characteristic that he should show most interest in and understanding for the imaginative writers, those whose work manifests-reflection or the direct life of feeling—Ščedrin, for instance, on the one hand, and Uspenskii and Garšin, on the other. Jakeibovič (Melšin) is congenial to him; of Čehov, the same can be said as regards the later works, wherein that writer has abandoned his earlier pose of impassivity. Mihailovskii found Andreev obscure, and Gorkii's work did not please him, for he considered Gor'kii's characters too domineering.
There is little about Puškin in Mihailovskii's writings, and little about Gogol. He cannot forgive the latter for sermonising, and he finds the same tendency to sermonise uncongenial in Dostoevskii and Tolstoi. The two last-named writers, however, receive detailed consideration, with the remarkable omission, previously referred to, that Mihailovskii largely ignores their discussion of religious problems. Doubtless Mihailovskii had good grounds for rejecting passivity and humility, but these do not comprise the whole of the religious problem. The relationship to Dostoevskii is remarkable, for Dostoevskii's literary and journalistic genre resembled that of Mihailovskii. Yet Mihailovskii's treatment of Dostoevskii was inadequate, whilst Dostoevskii never said a word about Mihailovskii.
Mihailovskii has frequently been extolled, as for instance by Kropotkin, because as early as 1875 he predicted the religious crisis which was coming in Tolstoi's mind. Kropotkin refers to the articles entitled The Right Hand and the Left Hand of Count Tolstoi. In my opinion, however, Tolstoi had clearly displayed this trend long before 1875, for the later Tolstoi is foreshadowed in that writer's earliest creations. However this may be, we are here concerned only with the characterisation of Mihailovskii himself, with the study of Mihailovskii's mental development. We can readily understand that he could not approve Tolstoi's campaign against science, or the ethical outlook on marriage enunciated by Tolstoi in The Kreutzer Sonata, though it may be suggested that Mihailovskii took the onslaught on science too literally. Moreover, Tolstoi's apolitical trend requires closer examination, for we must ask whether it did not in the end subserve the aims of the political
