Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/77

Rh Tolstoi could hardly have written The Cossacks without the inspiration of Gogol, Turgenev must have taken the most beautiful chapter in Virgin Soil directly from Old-fashioned Farmers, and Dostoevski's first book, Poor Folk, is in many places almost aslavish imitation of The Cloak—and he freely acknowledged the debtin the course of his story. The uncompromising attitude toward fidelity in Art which Gogol emphasised in The Portrait set the standard for every Russian writer who has attained prominence since his day. No one can read Chekhov and Andreev without being conscious of the hovering spirit of the first master of Russian fiction. He could truthfully have adapted the words of Joseph Hall:—