A History of Russian Literature. By K. Waliszewski. . (W. ieinemattn.
6s.1—This volume will introduce the reader to a
world which, unless he is quite exceptionally well informed, will be mostly new to him. How many could write down the names of ten Russian authors P Yet here we have some three hundred. Pushkin (Pouchkine), Tourguenev, Tolstoi, Karamsine, Gogol, and Krilof (Krylov) would probably exhaust the knowledge of the average reader, and not many could add four more. Unfortunately, many circumstances combine to shut out most people from a knowledge of Russia. There is the pie. liminary difficulty of an alien alphabet which looks familiar but is not, and then the very substantial difficulty of a very hard language. We are not quite sure whether, under the somewhat peculiar circumstances, M. Waliszewski might not have adopted a somewhat different method,—i.e., have grouped his authors under subjects. (He does this to some extent in his later chapters.) This seems an easier way of dealing with a very imperfectly informed public. But it is ungracious to complain of a very carefully written book, which has put all students of literature under a very considerable obligation.
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