that came to anything. Five relatively barren years passed and he published Dead Souls in 1842. For three years he laboured at a sequel to this book, but burned his work at the end of it. By 1848 he had become plunged in melancholy, and we find him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He scribbled away at Dead Souls, but had lost his magic touch, lost his faith in himself. In 1851, on the 11th of February, after returning from vespers he burned all the remaining papers of the sequel to Dead Souls. When he had done that he felt he had lost everything and that his time to die was at hand. He fell into an apathetic stupor, would see no one and had no interest in anything. Ten days after the burning of the manuscript he died.

But his work did not die. His books went through countless editions and were published in beautiful volumes with clever illustrations, or in cheap volumes with scarcely legible print. He was the national literary hero of his age. When Dostoieffsky appeared, the best that could be said of him was that a new Gogol had been discovered. Dostoieffsky himself was at first strongly under the influence of Gogol, and it is interesting to compare Poor Folk and the earlier humorous tales of Dostoieffsky with the humorous work of Gogol. Dostoieffsky, however, was destined to emerge from the influence of Gogol and take the great Russian people a long way farther on the road of national self-realisation.

It was in 1909 that Gogol had his last glorious year—the centenary of his birth. After the gloom and despair of the revolutionary period the Russian nation turned with relief to Gogol and found consolation there. The apathy and pessimism of Gogol’s later years they ascribed to despair over Russia, and in that they found a common ground for comfort. The horrors of the years 1905–1909 had blighted the lives of many young men in Russia. Gogol’s tears were their tears also. I was in Moscow myself that year, and read more about Gogol than ever before or since. I saw the somewhat famous monument unveiled in the Arbat Square at Moscow. It is worth seeing, and visitors to Moscow should go and see the immortal types of Dead Souls in bas-relief round the granite block on which the tragical and unhappy-looking Gogol is sitting.

I read Dead Souls long before I even thought of going to Russia. I have always wanted to give it to English friends to read. The existing translation was out of print. I think it might successfully have been re-issued before the war, but of course the present interest in Russia makes it certain of the widest reading. It was a matter of considerable joy to me when Mr. Fisher Unwin consented to re-publish it. At this time, when knowledge of the Russian life and character is so necessary for the British people, it is important that the great Russian classics be accessible. Ideas of Russia gleaned from books on Russia written by English people should be checked either by personal observation in Russia or by the reading of the great Russian novels. The works of Dostoieffsky and Tolstoy and Turgeniev have done much for Anglo- Russian friendship and mutual understanding. Gogol, who has been strangely neglected, can take his share. His books, and especially Dead Souls, are full of delight for every one.

Stephen Graham.

London,

2nd February, 1915.