Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/139

 of his countrymen, it is not surprising that his novels approach perfection.

His own standpoint was that of the Artist, and each man must be judged by his main purpose. Here is where he differs most sharply from Tolstoi, Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admire him more than they love him. To him the truth about life was always the main thing. His novels were never tracts, he wrote them with the most painstaking care, and in his whole career he never produced a pot-boiler. His work is invariably marked by that high seriousness which Arnold worshipped, and love of his art was his main inspiration. He had a gift for condensation, and a willingness to cultivate it, such as no other novelist has shown. It is safe to say that his novels tell more about human nature in less space than any other novels in the world. Small as they are, they are inexhaustible, and always reveal beauty unsuspected on the previous reading.

His stories are not stories of incident, but stories of character. The extraordinary interest that they arouse is confined almost entirely to our interest in his men and women; the plot, the narrative, the events are always secondary; he imitated no other novelist, and no other can imitate him. For this very reason, he can never enjoy the popularity of Scott or Dumas; he will always be caviare