was and wanted to be nothing in particular, and yet, as we read these letters of his, we feel gradually from within ourselves the conviction that he was a hero-more than that, the hero of our time.

...

'In every conjuncture of his life that we can trace in his letters he behaved squarely by himself, and since he is our great exemplar, by us. He refused to march under any political banner-a thing, let it be remembered, of almost inconceivable courage in his country; he submitted to savagely hostile attacks for his political indifference; yet he spent more of his life and energy in doing active good to his neighbours than all the high-souled professors of liberalism and social reform. He undertook an almost superhuman journey to Sahalin in 1890 to investigate the conditions of the prisoners there, in 1892 he spent the best part of a year as a doctor devising preventive measures against the cholera in the country district where he lived, and, although he had no time for the writing on which his living depended, he refused the government pay in order to preserve his own independence of action; in another year he was the leading spirit in organising measures of famine relief about Nizhni-Novgorod. From his childhood to his death, moreover, he was the sole support of his family. Measured by the standards of Christian morality, Tchehov was wholly a saint. His self-devotion was boundless.

'It seems a simple discipline, this moral and intellectual honesty of Tchehov's, yet in these days of conceit and coterie his letters strike us as more than strange. One predominant impression remains; it is that of Tchehov's candour of soul. Somehow he has achieved with open eyes the mystery of pureness of heart; and in that, though we dare not analyse it further, lies the secret of his greatness as a writer and of his present importance to ourselves.'

This is an admirable tribute to Tchehov, for which all his admirers must be grateful, but it presents Tchehov too much as an isolated phenomenon. Tchehov must be seen in relation to Russian culture, if his English readers are not to see him out of focus. Candour of soul is common in Russian literature. It was the spiritual tradition of Tchehov's great predecessors, no less than intellectual sincerity. Of course in Russia, as elsewhere, vanity and stupidity, conceit and pretentiousness are qualities ever springing up in literature like tares in the corn; but for the two generations before

Tchehov, Russian genius had evolved and responded to the twin ideals of remorseless sincerity and large warmhearted humanity. From Pushkin (1799-1837) to Tchehov (1860-1904) we find these twin ideals animating Pushkin, Gogol, Byelinsky, Aksakov, Grigorevitch, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Shtchedrin, Ertel, Korolenko, Garschin, and Gorky. These ideals are to be found underlying the conversations and analyses of character in the works of the leading writers. In Turgenev's novels especially the reader will find 'candour of soul' and 'pureness of heart' in constant evidence; no less were 'respect for human personality,' 'dread of lying and of vanity,' 'development of aesthetic feeling,' the ' ennoblement of the sexual instinct' insisted upon as the chief constituents of the 'true culture' which Tchehov emphasises in his letter to his brother Nikolay. And 'the new humanity' which Mr Murry says Tchehov 'set himself to achieve was nothing new to Russian contemporary thought, though Mr Murry is perfectly right in stressing the 'modernity' of his attitude. In restating and emphasising this creed of humanism Tchehov proved himself a true spiritual descendant of his great literary fore-runners, and their representative successor in the nineties of the last century.

Secondly, Mr Murry has not perhaps quite grasped that among the salt of Tchehov's own generation there were thousands of workers in science, art, and the liberal professions-school-teachers, professors, doctors, students, and land-owners-who also had been saturated in all the disillusions,' and who, like him, 'did not march under any political banner' but did their work with 'pureness of heart,' with complete 'moral and intellectual honesty.' It was to them that Tchehov appealed; it was they whom Tchehov represented both in their aspirations and their disillusionment with politics. The eighties and early nineties which left their imprint on Tchehov's youth and early manhood were a time of discouragement and general disbelief in revolutionary activity. The Nihilist movement of the previous years had collapsed; political reaction under Alexander II was in full swing. Kropotkin, indeed,† * See Tolstoy's 'Letter to the Liberals.'

Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature,' pp. 313, 314.

singles out Tchehov as pre-eminently the painter of 'the disillusioned intellectuals' of the eighties and early nineties, and of the 'breakdown of the Intelligentsia.' 'In the fifties,' he says, 'the intellectuals had at least full hope in their forces; now they had lost even these hopes.' Kropotkin, a revolutionary propagandist himself, criticises Tchehov in a partisan spirit; but it is true that in Tchehov's four plays, 'Ivanov,' 'Uncle Vanya,' 'The Three Sisters,' 'The Cherry Orchard,' the moral collapse of the Intelligentsia is threatening, and that this was one of the portents heralding the crash of the régime a generation later. It is true, also, as Mr Murry states, that 'Tchehov submitted to savagely hostile attacks for his political indifference'; but it is an exaggeration to style his action 'an act of almost inconceivable courage' in the Russia of the nineties, where the periodical press had long been saturated with polemical attacks on this writer and on that for his 'reactionary' or 'revolutionary' or 'indifferent' attitude. Tchehov's contemporaries, Ertel and Garschin, were equally indifferent to politics. Turgenev himself, for the last twenty years of his life, had lived in a storm of such attacks. Yet as Mr Murry says, Tchehov was a 'saint' and a 'hero' and an example to his contemporaries, though this does not make him a phenomenon in Russian eyes. His unselfishness and purity of spirit, his radiant character, his devotion to his work, his struggle against human stupidity and contemporary lies, unite with his genius and his modesty to make him the most delightful figure of his 'disillusioned' generation.

Anton Tchehov, born in 1860 at Taganrog, was the son of an emancipated serf. His father was a very talented man, 'active in all the affairs of the town, devoted to church singing and violin playing. His mother was the daughter of a cloth-merchant of fairly good education, a highly spiritual woman, who instilled into her children a hatred of brutality, and a feeling of regard for all who were in an inferior position, and for birds and animals. As a boy Anton 'was always writing stories.' By the age of twenty he had seen many kinds of life, earning his living from the age of sixteen, at Taganrog, and paying for his education at the high

school, practising music, fond of the theatre, flirting with the high-school girls,' making country excursions and learning to ride and shoot. In 1879 he joined his family at Moscow. It was the absolute necessity of earning money to pay for his fees at the University and to help support the household that forced Anton to write,' says his biographer. At Voskresensk, where his brother was master of the parish school, Tchehov gained an insight into the life of teachers, land-owners, peasants, and military society. A little later, after training for a medical career, he took a job as a doctor's assistant, at Zvenigorod, where he was introduced to the society of literary and artistic people.'*

Thus at the age of twenty-five Tchehov had intersected Russian provincial life at many angles, had made many friends by the charm of his lively and sweet nature, and could have had, in fact, 'no better preparation for his delineation of the life of contemporary Russia. His art, naturally, did not reach perfection all at once. Many of his early humorous sketches are superficial and crude; and, when his Tales were collected, those excluded would fill four volumes. Again, he did not learn at once to suppress didactic touches and blend his comments artistically with his characters.' Always modest, he did not take his sketches seriously till Grigorovitch urged him to do so. But by temperament, training, experience, and outlook Tchehov became the literary incarnation of the rich emotional consciousness of the Russian nature, of its fluid responsiveness of feeling. And not only so, but Tchehov is the last word' in the modern criticism of life. As Mr Murry says, 'To-day we begin to feel how intimately Tchehov belongs to us; to-morrow we may feel how infinitely he is still in advance of us.'†

Wherein is he so 'modern'? It was the conjunction of his peculiarly independent flexibility of mind with his keen scientific outlook that equipped him for seizing and judging modern life from fresh angles. While

* See the 'Biographical Sketch' in 'Letters of Tchehov.' + Aspects of Literature,' p. 84.

'Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night at the other's. Though it's disorderly, it's not so dull, and besides neither of them loses anything from my infidelity' ('Letters of Tchehov,' p. 99).

representative of the changing horizons and complexity of the social organism of the new Russia (1885-1904), Tchehov's vision fused the detached, impartial attitude of the modern scientist with the deep humanism, the psychological insight, the caressing tenderness and the gay humour of his sensitive temperament. It would be wrong to exaggerate this 'scientific' strain in Tchehov's art, but it is sublimated in the soft, rich depths of his æsthetic consciousness, and is constantly inspiring or reinforcing his critical attitude. For example, 'The Duel' turns on the antipathy felt by Van Koren the zoologist, a man of unbending character, whose life runs on the straight track of scientific ideas, for Laevsky, the neurasthenic young official, preoccupied with his dissolute amours. The antagonism between the two men ends in a stupid duel. But Van Koren, whose clear, cold reasoning about the moral law, sexual morals, and the extinction of the weak is theoretically sound, is as much blinded by his over-logical convictions as Laevsky is obsessed by his dissolute instincts. The complexity of life is shown by the sequel, when Van Koren's failure to kill Laevsky is the instrument of the latter's regeneration. 'If one is not mistaken in the main, one is mistaken in details,' is Tchehov's moral; 'nobody knows the real truth.' And this sceptical, scientific conscience speaks in 'The Duel' to reinforce Tchehov's typically Russian insistence on human charity. Tchehov indeed is in advance of us by the way in which his scientific knowledge corrects or sharpens ordinary insight and his humanity corrects scientific narrowness. In England, America, and Europe generally scientific men are apt to be cribbed, cabined, and confined by their work of specialising. Their scientific horizon stops short of the humanities. But with Tchehov science broadens the humanities, and both

I have no doubt that the study of medicine has had an important influence on my literary work; it has considerably enlarged the sphere of my observation, has enriched me with knowledge the true value of which for me as a writer can only be understood by one who is himself a doctor. It has also had a guiding influence; and it is probably due to my close association with medicine that I have succeeded in avoiding many mistakes. Familiarity with the natural sciences and with scientific method has always kept me on my guard; and I have always tried, where it was possible, to be consistent with the facts of science, and where it was impossible I have preferred not to write at all' ('Letters of Tchehov,' p. 369).