‘"How much are these cakes?’

    ‘"Two for a farthing.’

    ’Yegorushka took out of his pocket the cake given him the day before
    by the Jewess and asked him:—­

    ‘"And how much do you charge for cakes like this?’

    ’The shopman took the cake in his hands, looked at it from all
    sides, and raised one eyebrow.

    ‘"Like that?’ he asked.

    ’Then he raised the other eyebrow, thought a minute, and answered:—­

    ‘"Two for three farthings...."’

It is foolish to quote it.  It is like a golden pebble from the bed of a stream.  The stream that flows over Tchehov’s innumerable pebbles, infinitely diverse and heterogeneous, is the stream of a deliberately sublimated quality.  The figure is inexact, as figures are.  Not every pebble could be thus transmuted.  But how they are chosen, what is the real nature of the relation which unites them, as we feel it does, is a secret which modern English writers need to explore.  Till they have explored and mastered it Tchehov will remain a master in advance of them.

[AUGUST, 1919.

* * * * *

The case of Tchehov is one to be investigated again and again because he is the only great modern artist in prose.  Tolstoy was living throughout Tchehov’s life, as Hardy has lived throughout our own, and these are great among the greatest.  But they are not modern.  It is an essential part of their greatness that they could not be; they have a simplicity and scope that manifestly belongs to all time rather than to this.  Tchehov looked towards Tolstoy as we to Hardy.  He saw in him a Colossus, one whose achievement was of another and a greater kind than his own.

’I am afraid of Tolstoy’s death.  If he were to die there would be a big empty place in my life.  To begin with, because I have never loved any man as much as him....  Secondly, while Tolstoy is in literature it is easy and pleasant to be a literary man; even recognising that one has done nothing and never will do anything is not so dreadful, since Tolstoy will do enough for all.  His work is the justification of the enthusiasms and expectations built upon literature.  Thirdly, Tolstoy takes a firm stand; he has an immense authority, and so long as he is alive, bad tastes in literature, vulgarity of every kind, insolent and lachrymose, all the bristling, exasperated vanities will be in the far background, in the shade....’—­(January, 1900.)

Tchehov was aware of the gulf that separated him from the great men before him, and he knew that it yawned so deep that it could not be crossed.  He belonged to a new generation, and he alone perhaps was fully conscious of it.  ‘We are lemonade,’ he wrote in 1892.