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Ahi - if your opinion of Orwell is "pretty dismal," than I respectfully decline to attempt to summarize Orwell's discussion of Tolstoy. Orwell in my view is the greatest English language essayist and critic of the twentieth century. In those disciplines he is far superior to Tolstoy, especially the cranky older Tolstoy.
Tolstoy, of course, did create greater novels than Orwell, but Orwell was no slouch in that area.
Orwell had interesting things to say (in those essays) about a number of important figures, including Swift, Gandhi, and Twain. His comments about Mark Twain were that Twain was a man of powerful and subversive vision, but that through either cowardice or a desire for popularity Twain held back and presented himself as a harmless genial comedian.
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