A book of even greater importance is Mr. Aylmer Maude's
Tolstoy an Art (Oxford University Press). Mr. Maude has collected in this volume everything that Tolstoy wrote on any of the arts ; the main pieces, of course, are the essays, What is Art? and Shakespeare and the Drama. The second is the more exciting and rebellious of the two. It was written when Tolstoy was seventy-five ; he confesses in it that when he was young he read Shakespeare for the first time with an expectation of huge delight—and that he found to his horror, with doubts of his literary sanity, that Shakespeare was "insignificant and simply bad." "I long distrusted my judg- ment, and to check my conclusions, during fifty years I repeatedly set to work to read Shakespeare in all possible forms—in Russian, in English, and in German in Schlegel's translation, as I was advised to. I read the comedies, tragedies, and historical plays, several times over, and I invariably experienced the same feelings—repulsion, weariness,
• and bewilderment." He held his peace in fear, until his judgment had become indisputably confirmed in him ; then he decided "to show as best I can why I think Shakespeare cannot be admitted to be either a great writer of genius, or even an average one." It is important to realize that although the vehemence of Tolstoy's accusation, the emphasis upon Shakespeare's faults or incompletenesses comes from Tolstoy's own temperament, so antipathetic to Shakespeare's lack of moral purpose, yet the actual charges he makes are justified ; they are keen but disproportionate criticism. Shakespeare is not to be exempted from our judgment ; he, as well as others, must "abide our question " ; and it is illuminating to have an attack upon him so whole-hearted and so sincere.
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