LOVE. ([Page 113].)
This poem is Pushkin all over. In four lines he has given a whole drama with a world of pathos and tenderness in it. These four lines give more instruction in the art of story-telling than volumes on the "Art of Fiction." A magazine writer, who of the same incidents would have woven out some twenty pages (of which no fewer than nineteen and three-quarters would have been writ for the approval of check-book critic, rather than of the art critic), would have really told less than Pushkin has here told,—so true is the preacher's criticism on his own sermon: "Madame, if it had been shorter by half, it would have been twice as long!"
JEALOUSY. ([Page 114].)
Of this piece I have already spoken in the Preface, § 7.
IN AN ALBUM. ([Page 116].)
This is an excellent example of Pushkin's sentiment, of which I spoke in the Introduction, Chapter III. It is all the more entitled to the consideration of Anglo-Saxon a priori sentiment-haters (it is so easy to keep to a priori judgments, they are so convenient; they save discussion!) because Pushkin wrote this piece when fully matured, at the age of thirty, when his severe classic taste was already formed.
FIRST LOVE. ([Page 120].)
These lines are taken from the Narrative Poem, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus."
SIGNS. ([Page 124].)