Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/145

Rh Baring's Landmarks in Russian Literature, whose book is chiefly valuable for its sympathetic understanding of the genius of Dostoevski. How far this reaction has gone may be seen in the remark of Professor Brückner, in his Literary History of Russia: "The great, healthy artist Turgenev always moves along levelled paths, in the fair avenues of an ancient landowner's park. Aesthetic pleasure is in his well-balanced narrative of how Jack and Jill did not come together: deeper ideas he in no wise stirs in us." If A House of Gentlefolk and Fathers and Children stir no deeper ideas than that in the mind of Professor Brückner, whose fault is it? One can only pity him. But there are still left some humble individuals, at least one, who, caring little for politics and the ephemeral nature of political watchwords and party strife, and still less for faddish fashions in art, persist in giving their highest homage to the great artists whose work shows the most perfect union of Truth and Beauty.