of Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare.
Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the more
evident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberately
Homeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much to
this little book by Gogol. It is astonishing that so small a work can
show such colossal force. Force is its prime quality--physical,
mental, religious. In this story the old Cossacks, centuries dead,
have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in all
their amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating and
drinking, their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion to
their religious faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired by
passion for race and native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy.
These Cossacks are the veritable children of the steppes, and their
vast passions, their Homeric laughter, their absolute recklessness in
battle, are simply an expression of the boundless range of the mighty
landscape.

"The further they penetrated the steppe, the more beautiful it became.
Then all the South, all that region which now constitutes New Russia,
even to the Black Sea, was a green, virgin wilderness. No plough had
ever passed over the immeasurable waves of wild growth; the horses
alone, hiding themselves in it as in a forest, trod it down. Nothing
in nature could be finer. The whole surface of the earth presented
itself as a green-gold ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions of
different flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peeped
light-blue, dark-blue, and lilac star-thistles; the yellow broom
thrust up its pyramidal head; the parasol-shaped white flower of the
false flax shimmered on high. A wheat-ear, brought God knows whence,
was filling out to ripening. About their slender roots ran partridges
with out-stretched necks. The air was filled with the notes of a