and their supporters. Bulgarin led the attack. Everything
that is usually said against a new departure in
literature or art was said against the Revizor. It was
not original. It was improbable, impossible, coarse, vulgar;
lacked plot. It turned on a stale anecdote that
everybody knew. It was a rank farce. The characters
were mere caricatures. "What sort of a town was it
that did not hold a single honest soul?"

Gogol's sensitive nature shrank before the tempest
that burst upon him, and he fled from his enemies all the
way out of Russia. "Do what you please about presenting
the play in Moscow," he writes to Shchepkin
four days after its first production in St. Petersburg.
"I am not going to bother about it. I am sick of the
play and all the fussing over it. It produced a great
noisy effect. All are against me . . . they abuse me
and go to see it. No tickets can be obtained for the
fourth performance."

But the best literary talent of Russia, with Pushkin
and Bielinsky, the greatest critic Russia has produced, at
the head, ranged itself on his side.

Nicolay Vasilyevich Gogol was born in Sorochintzy,
government of Poltava, in 1809. His father was a Little
Russian, or Ukrainian, landowner, who exhibited considerable
talent as a playwright and actor. Gogol was
educated at home until the age of ten, then went to
Niezhin, where he entered the gymnasium in 1821.