The Tale of Igor's Campaign
As a literary critic he had few principles, his motto being "easy reading and less thought". One day he would pronounce his friend Nestor Kukolnik to be Gogol's superior, only to place Gogol higher than Homer the very next day. He dismissed "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" as a clumsy fake, derogated Pushkin as a second-hand imitator, and declared the "Tale of Bygone Years" to be written in Polish.