Count Tolstoi's method is much larger, and his field of vision more
extended. He reminds us sometimes of Paul Veronese, and, like that great
painter, can crowd, without over-crowding, the giant canvas on which he
works. We may not at first gain from his works that artistic unity of
impression which is Tourgenieff's chief charm, but once that we have
mastered the details the whole seems to have the grandeur and the
simplicity of an epic. Dostoieffski differs widely from both his rivals.
He is not so fine an artist as Tourgenieff, for he deals more with the
facts than with the effects of life; nor has he Tolstoi's largeness of
vision and epic dignity; but he has qualities that are distinctively and
absolutely his own, such as a fierce intensity of passion and
concentration of impulse, a power of dealing with the deepest mysteries
of psychology and the most hidden springs of life, and a realism that is
pitiless in its fidelity, and terrible because it is true. Some time ago
we had occasion to draw attention to his marvellous novel Crime and
Punishment, where in the haunt of impurity and vice a harlot and an
assassin meet together to read the story of Dives and Lazarus, and the
outcast girl leads the sinner to make atonement for his sin; nor is the
book entitled Injury and Insult at all inferior to that great
masterpiece. Mean and ordinary though the surroundings of the story may
seem, the heroine Natasha is like one of the noble victims of Greek
tragedy; she is Antigone with the passion of Phaedra, and it is
impossible to approach her without a feeling of awe. Greek also is the
gloom of Nemesis that hangs over each character, only it is a Nemesis
that does not stand outside of life, but is part of our own nature and of
the same material as life itself. Aleosha, the beautiful young lad whom
Natasha follows to her doom, is a second Tito Melema, and has all Tito's
charm and grace and fascination. Yet he is different. He would never
have denied Baldassare in the Square at Florence, nor lied to Romola
about Tessa. He has a magnificent, momentary sincerity, a boyish
unconsciousness of all that life signifies, an ardent enthusiasm for all
that life cannot give. There is nothing calculating about him. He never
thinks evil, he only does it. From a psychological point of view he is
one of the most interesting characters of modem fiction, as from an
artistic he is one of the most attractive. As we grow to know him he
stirs strange questions for us, and makes us feel that it is not the
wicked only who do wrong, nor the bad alone who work evil.

And by what a subtle objective method does Dostoieffski show us his
characters! He never tickets them with a list nor labels them with a
description. We grow to know them very gradually, as we know people whom
we meet in society, at first by little tricks of manner, personal
appearance, fancies in dress, and the like; and afterwards by their deeds
and words; and even then they constantly elude us, for though
Dostoieffski may lay bare for us the secrets of their nature, yet he
never explains his personages away; they are always surprising us by
something that they say or do, and keep to the end the eternal mystery of
life.