BOOKS
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS TCHEKHOV was one of the best letter-writers in the world ; he wrote with so vivid an eye and so amiable, appreciative, gentle a spirit, It is true that he never troubled to be profound or to tackle abstruse, subjects. His mind was not formed for speculation and he seems something of an oddity among his fellow-Russians. But by the very quickness and spontaneity of his comments he kept free from the constriction and lecture-habit that shows in all letter-writers who are at all metaphysically minded. Shelley's letters often read like third-rate tracts ; and even with Keats we sometimes lose that intimacy of tone which marks a letter out as written to one man and to him alone, written, as it were, with your friend before you, a free conversation to amuse and inform him, not to explain or illuminate yourself. A good letter- writer needs to be more of a natural altruist than either Keats or Shelley. Still, Tchekhov had common sense enough ; there is a masterpiece of a letter written to his brother, Alexander, after Alexander had been displaying a Russian over-sensitiveness, "wounded to the soul" and so forth because a third brother had not written to him. There can never have been a gentler, cleaner reproof ; a more efficient and good-natured damping to hysteria. Mr. koteliansky and Mr. Philip Tomlinson have made an excellent selection from his most important letters, have translated some biographical notes and reminiscences, and issue the volume as The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov (Cassell).
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