Count Tolstoi as Novelist and Thinker. By Charles Edward Turner.
(Triibner and Co.)—We are glad to read what a careful and intelligent student of Count Tolstors works has to say about them, though we cannot allow that he has convinced or even come near to convincing us. The integrity of Count Tolstoi's aims is beyond all doubt. He has given proofs of it that cannot be gain- sayed. But we doubt whether his influence on the mind of Russia is as good as Mr. Turner thinks. The impression he makes on the average English reader is, we venture to say, extremely depressing, and all the more so because his genius renders it so vivid and forcible. Take, for instance, "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch." What could be more distinctly pessimistic ? Mr. Turner quotes the author's own account of the matter :—" The past life of Ivan Ilyitch had been of the simplest and most ordinary kind, and most horrible." And then he adds on his own account :—" And, in truth, what is there more horrible than the ordinary lives of men ?" If that is not pessimism we know not what is. There is not a single gleam of light in the whole book. Such a writer, we venture to affirm, cannot be influencing for good Russia or any other country.
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