Besides his novels, he wrote a brilliant comedy called
the _Revisor_, dealing with the evils of bureaucracy.
Towards the end of the year 1877, died Nicholas Nekrasov, the most
remarkable poet produced by Russia since Lermontov. He has left
six volumes of poetry, of a peculiarly realistic type, chiefly
dwelling upon the misfortunes of the Russian peasantry, and putting
before us most forcibly the dull grey tints of their monotonous
and purposeless lives.
I have not space to enumerate here even the most prominent Russian
novelists. No account, however, of their literature would be anything
like complete which omitted the name of Ivan Tourgheniev, whose
reputation is European. With the Russians the English novel of the
realistic type is the fashionable model. In this branch of literature,
French influences have hardly been felt at all. The historical
novel--an echo of the great romances of Sir Walter Scott--had its
cultivators in such writers as Zagoskin and Lazhechnikov; but at
the present time, with the exception of the recent productions
of Count Tolstoi, it is a form of literature as dead in Russia
as in our own country.
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