from the _Souvenirs sur Tourguenev_ (published in 1887) that Turgenev's
only distinct failure of importance in character drawing, Insarov, was
not taken from life, but was the legacy of a friend Karateieff, who
implored Turgenev to work out an unfinished conception. Insarov is a
figure of wood. He is so cleverly constructed, and the central idea
behind him is so strong, that his wooden joints move naturally, and
the spectator has only the instinct, not the certainty, of being
cheated. The idea he incarnates, that of a man whose soul is aflame
with patriotism, is finely suggested, but an idea, even a great one,
does not make an individuality. And in fact Insarov is not a man, he
is an automaton. To compare Shubin's utterances with his is to
perceive that there is no spontaneity, no inevitability in Insarov. He
is a patriotic clock wound up to go for the occasion, and in truth he
is very useful. Only on his deathbed, when the unexpected happens, and
the machinery runs down, do we feel moved. Then, he appears more
striking dead than alive--a rather damning testimony to the power
Turgenev credits him with. This artistic failure of Turgenev's is, as
he no doubt recognised, curiously lessened by the fact that young
girls of Elena's lofty idealistic type are particularly impressed by
certain stiff types of men of action and great will-power, whose
capacity for moving straight towards a certain goal by no means
implies corresponding brain-power. The insight of a Shubin and the
moral worth of a Bersenyev are not so valuable to the Elenas of this
world, whose ardent desire to be made good use of, and to seek some
great end, is best developed by strength of aim in the men they love.

And now to see what the novel before us means to the Russian mind, we
must turn to the infinitely suggestive background. Turgenev's genius
was of the same force in politics as in art; it was that of seeing
aright. He saw his country as it was, with clearer eyes than any man