Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/8

 viii both Tolstoy and Tchehov commended his work it is only in recent years that it has been judged dispassionately by Russian critics. The critic, M. J. Olgin, in his interesting comments on Lyeskov, quotes a typical attack, characteristically Russian in its parti pris, by A. T.I. [sic] Bogdanovitch:—

But fifteen years later this verdict is reversed by N. O. Lerner, who writes:—

Sementkovsky, Lyeskov's biographer, from whom we condense the information given below, makes it clear that it was Lyeskov's honesty and independence of mind that caused his work to be