Tolstoy was a master of prose; both his novella "The Vampire" (praised by Vissarion Belinsky) and his novel "Prince Serebrenni" received a lot of good press. The latter, though, was criticised for being tendentious; many argued that both the main character and Yelena Morozova looked very much like people of the 19th, rather than 16th century. On the other hand, Ivan Grozny and the oprichnina horrors were depicted with great vividness and passion; the novel's masterfully built structure, its rich musical language made it a perfect Walter Scott-type of book for adolescents, according to Vengerov. "The novel is highly involving… finely structured and well-written," Ivan Turgenev wrote, recommending it to a French publisher. Still, as a prosaic Tolstoy made much less of an impact than as a poet. He’s been lauded as a classic of the 19th century Russian historical drama. D. S. Mirsky regarded Tolstoy as a dramatist superior to Aleksander Ostrovsky, describing his plays as "full of intriguing ideas and brilliantly crafted characters. They impress us with intelligence and insight rather than with flights of imagination, but in "Tsar Fyodor" Tolstoy managed to create one of the most interesting characters in Russian literature: that of a kind and weak ruler who has a keen sense of justice but is unable to make his evil aids implement his good will."