his character Klim Samgin), later explaining: "Leskov was... the only Russian author to have succeeded in separating the whole generation of his countrymen into a new set of sub-classes, each belonging to a different epoch." Gorky mentioned Leskov among authors that had helped him form his own style and outlook. "It was partly under Leskov's influence that I decided to go out and see how real people lived," he wrote. "Leskov influenced me enormously, with his knowledge of the Russian language and its richness," Gorky remarked in another letter. Leskov was continuously experimenting with forms, his most favourable being "the chronicle" which he saw as a healthy alternative to orthodox novel. "Things pass by us and I'm not going to diminish or boost their respective significance; I won't be forced into doing so by the unnatural, man-made format of the novel which demands the rounding up of fabulas and the drawing together of plotlines to one central course. That's not how life is. Human life runs on in its own way and that's how I'm going to treat the roll of events in my works," he once wrote. Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary's biographer Semyon Vengerov found in Leskov traits common to Alexander Ostrovsky, Aleksey Pisemsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky. "But the most astounding feature in him is what Turgenev called his 'inventiveness'. Some of Leskov's 5–6 page stories are packed with plotlines that could have filled volumes. This is especially true for The Enchanted Wanderer where each new turn brings out another fascinating scene, with its own new set of colours. Apart from his large anti-nihilistic novels (No Way Out, At Daggers Drawn), less successful artistically, Leskov's prose is remarkably concise and totally devoid of filler and ballast," Vengerov added. The major issue contemporary critics had with Leskov's prose was what they perceived to be an "overabundance of colours"; the grotesque expressiveness of the language he used. This view was shared by some of his colleagues. Leo Tolstoy who rated Leskov very high still thought he was "too over the top" in his linguistic experiments. In a December 3, 1890, letter, writing of the short story "The Hour of God's Will", he remarked: "This fairytale is excellent, but it would have been much better if not for this overabundance of talent." Leskov was unrepentant. "To write in a simple manner as Lev Nikolayevich does, is beyond me. Such a gift