of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of
the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, "the poet of the people's
sorrow," whose muse "of grief and vengeance" has supremely dominated the
minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the
sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin and
Lermontov.

Russia is a country still largely mysterious to the denizen
of Western Europe, and the Russian peasant, the _moujik_, an
impenetrable riddle to him. Of all the great Russian writers not one has
contributed more to the interpretation of the enigmatical soul of the
_moujik_ than Russia's great poet, Nekrassov, in his life-work the
national epic, _Who can be Happy in Russia?_

There are few literate persons in Russia who do not know whole pages of
this poem by heart. It will live as long as Russian literature exists;
and its artistic value as an instrument for the depiction of Russian
nature and the soul of the Russian people can be compared only with that
of the great epics of Homer with regard to the legendary life of
ancient Greece.

Nekrassov seemed destined to dwell from his birth amid such surroundings
as are necessary for the creation of a great national poet.

Nicholas Alexeievitch Nekrassov was the descendant of a noble family,
which in former years had been very wealthy, but subsequently had lost
the greater part of its estates. His father was an officer in the army,
and in the course of his peregrinations from one end of the country to
the other in the fulfilment of his military duties he became acquainted
with a young Polish girl, the daughter of a wealthy Polish aristocrat.