too, that while his student friends went wild at the theatre over
Schiller, Turgenev immensely preferred Goethe, and could practically
repeat the whole first part of "Faust" by heart. Turgenev, like
Goethe, was a natural aristocrat in his manner and in his literary
taste--and had the same dislike for extremists of all kinds. With the
exception of Turgenev's quiet but profound pessimism, his temperament
was very similar to that of the great German--such a man will surely
incur the hatred of the true Reformer type.

Turgenev was one of the best educated among modern men-of-letters; his
knowledge was not superficial and fragmentary, it was solid and
accurate. Of all modern novelists, he is the best exponent of genuine
culture.

Turgenev often ridiculed in his novels the Russian Anglo-maniac; but
in one respect he was more English than the English themselves. This
is seen in his passion for shooting. Nearly all of his trips to
Britain were made solely for this purpose, and most of the
distinguished Englishmen that he met, like Tennyson, he met while
visiting England for grouse. Shooting, to be sure, is common enough in
Russia; it appears in Artsybashev's "Sanin," and there was a time when
Tolstoi was devoted to this sport, though it later appeared on his
long blacklist. But Turgenev had the passion for it characteristic
only of the English race; and it is interesting to observe that this
humane and peace-loving man entered literature with a gun in his hand.
It was on his various shooting excursions in Russia that he obtained
so intimate a knowledge of the peasants and of peasant life; and his
first important book, "A Sportsman's Sketches," revealed to the world
two things: the dawn of a new literary genius, and the wretched
condition of the serfs. This book has often been called the "Uncle