16

RUSSIA

rent History, New York, November 1918); Levine, I. Don, 'The Russian Revolution' (ib. 1917); Long. R. C., 'Russian Revolution Aspects' (ib. 1919); McCabe, J., 'Romance of the Romanoffs' (ib. 1917); Marcosson, I. F., "The Rebirth of Russia) (New York 1917); Olgin, M. J., The Soul of the Russian Revolution' (ib. 1917); Petrunkevitch, Harper and Golder, The Russian Revolution' (ib.); Poole, E., "The Dark People: Russia's Crisis' (ib. 1918) and The Village: Russian Impressions' (ib. 1919); Price, M. P., 'War and Revolution in Asiatic Russia' (London 1918); Reed, J., Ten Days that Shook the World' (New York 1919); Rivet, C., 'The Last of the Romanoffs' (ib. 1918); Ross, E. A., 'Russia in Upheaval' (ib. 1918); Russell, C. E., (Unchained Russia' (ib. 1918); Sack, A. J., The Birth of the Russian Democracy (ib. 1918); Spargo, J., Bolshevism' (ib. 1919); Trotzky, Leon, "The Bolsheviki and World Peace (New York World, 13 Jan. 1918); id., 'History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk (London 1917); id., 'Our Revolution, etc.) (New York 1918); Victoroff-Toporoff, V. (ed.), 'La Première Année de la Révolution Russe' (Bern 1918); Walpole, H., 'Petrograd on the Eve of Revolution) (London 1919); Weiss, J., 'Les Bolchéviks au Purvoir (Lausanne 1918); Wilton, R., 'Russia's Agony (New York 1918); The Thing Called Bolshevism' (World's Work, New York, January 1919). See MAXIMALISTS. WOISLAV M. PETROVITCH,

Chief of Slavonic Division, New York Public Library.

3. RUSSIAN LANGUAGE. In historical times the Slavic languages appear already subdivided into three groups, the southern, the western and the eastern. The southern comprises the Serbo-Croatians and Slovenians, known as Jugo-Slavs, and the Bulgarians; the western consists of the Czechs, Slovaks, SerboLusatians and Poles; the eastern embodies all the Russian dialects. It is doubtful whether the present subdivision of the Russian dialects into Little, White and Great Russian goes back beyond the 11th century, but since then these have formed distinct groups, and the present growth of nationalism in the Ukraine bids fair to bring about a strong literary development of Little Russian, while White Russian may politically and socially disappear in the newly-created Lithuanian, Polish and Little Russian nationalities. Kiev was originally Great Russian, but early in the Middle Ages Little Russians kept moving up from Galicia until now they can claim linguistically the territory north as far as the government of Syedlets and parts of Grodno and Minsk. They hold the governments of Poltava, Kharkov, Voronezh and extend into Chernigov, Kiev, Volhynia, that is, they are found in the territory provisionally denominated as the Ukraine. The White Russian, an intermediary between Great Russian and Polish, is found in the governments of Grodno, Vilno, Vitebsk, Pskov, Mogilev, Minsk. Although used in historical documents in the Middle Ages it never developed a literature of its own.

The Great Russian, which we shall now call Russian, is divided into two large groups, by a line running from Lake Peipus to Nizhni-Novgorod and thence directly east. The chief characteristic of the southern group is the pro

nunciation of unaccented o as a, which is not the case. in the north. The chief representative of the southern group is the local Moscow speech, which is the basis for the official language, and, both on account of its political importance and the softness of its consonantal enunciation, bears the same relation to the Russian dialects that the Sienese or Florentine bears to the Italian dialects. But the Muscovite pronunciation is not rigorously followed outside the southern group. In the north the unaccented o remains o, and throughout the vast territory which belongs to Russia, without being Great Russian, the school pronunciation is normalized and more regular than in the soft utterance of Moscow, thus bearing the same relation to the Muscovite that the English of American schools bears to the Bostonian or New England pronunciation.

The language of literature and the Church up to the 18th century was not Russian, but Church Slavic, which is of southern Bulgarian origin, due to the dissemination of Christianity from Bulgaria. But from the very beginning the local Russian speech of Kiev intruded into the vocabulary and pronunciation of the Church and modified it, while the Bulgarian of the Church language similarly affected the spoken language. Thus the Church Slavic of Russia in time assumed a special aspect in the Church books of the Russian redaction, later to reenter Serbia and Bulgaria and reintroduce a considerable Russian element into the southern languages.

The Bulgarian introduced a very large number of phonetic and morphological peculiarities into the spoken language, especially in words connected with the intellectual and religious life. The chronicles and judicial documents employed from the start a language which was essentially Great Russian, but with an admixture of Church Slavic words. Though originally an Indo-European language, Russian has a considerable non-Indo-European vocabulary. The Finnish tribes of the north and the Tatar nations of the south, even before the Tatar invasion, have enriched the vocabulary, and there are still other unaccounted-for elements in the language, which of late have been ascribed to a prehistoric residence in the Caucasus. Beginning with the 14th century Moscow takes the place of Kiev as an intellectual centre, and here the local speech, which arose from a union of southern and northern dialects, penetrates into the written language, and the local literary varieties of Novgorod, Tver and Ryazan soon pale before the administrative language of Moscow. Since then the Russian has received new linguistic additions. The most refined literary Polish furnished a considerable number of words, dealing with manners, and the introduction of the technical arts from the West opened the door to Dutch and German words, which entered in alarming quantity with Peter the Great. Later, the adoption of Western culture has given an enormous number of words from the German, the Romance languages and the Latin for scientific purposes. If one considers that possibly one-third of the Church Slavic represented Greek borrowings, and that these were also bequeathed to the Russian, one can see that the Russian, like most literary languages, is very composite in its

nature. From the 16th century on the spoken language is more and more used as a means of written expression, but up to the 18th century the Church Slavic maintained itself successfully in the Church. With the growth of culture, the spoken Muscovite and the Church Slavic blend into one, and in the second half of the 18th century the literary norm is established, to be perfected by Karamzin and Pushkin into a harmonious tongue, capable of all uses to which a literary language is put.

The Russian language is, in spite of the prevailing opinion, not a difficult language, although very rich in grammatical forms and forbidding to the beginner on account of its strange alphabet. The alphabet is identical. with the Church Slavic, except that Peter the Great in 1708 simplified its letters by bringing them in harmony with the simpler Latin letters of the West. This current form of the alphabet is known as the civil alphabet, as opposed to the Church Slavic Kirilitsa. The alphabet consists of 37 letters, but two of them are rarely used, and the Bolshevik Minister of EduIcation has ordered the abandonment of. the useless hard sign and the superfluous ye, which is phonetically identical with e and of y, which is identical with i. This reform has long been mooted and, should it become universal, Russian would be the best phonetic language of Europe. The additional letters to the Latin alphabet are not a hindrance, but an advantage, because in Polish and Czech, where the Latin alphabet is used, the diacritical marks used to represent additional sounds are not conducive to easy and rapid writing. The accent is variable in Russian and extremely difficult if studied in itself. Therefore, all the better grammars and readers, even those for the Russian schools, where non-Russians may happen to be, are accented throughout. It can be acquired only by long practice, when analogy, which guides the native in his speech, automatically and with fair safety furnishes a clue to the accent of any new form one may meet. The pronunciation of Russian is not difficult, but the chief difficulty to the Westerner lies in his tendency to harden soft combinations. Before e and i and the vowels beginning with y, such as ya, ye, yo, all the consonants, but more especially the dentals, become distinctly palatalized, that is, these are pronounced not with the tip of the tongue pressing against the roof of the teeth, but by touching the palate with the tongue higher up. Another difficulty is the hard before a, o and u, which is not pronounced, as in English, between the tip of the tongue and the root of the teeth, but, while the tip of the tongue rests against the teeth, by vibrating once the uvula and producing a guttural, akin to a gutteral r. The other sounds offer no especial difficulty. The phonetic changes within the conjugation of the verb or in derivations, which appear so puzzling to one beginning the study of Russian, is in reality produced by an attempt to remain phonetic, for in English or French practically the same phenomenon may be observed, only while the Russian writes noshu for nosiu, the English writes mission and pronounces mishon. A clear understanding of the law of phonetic change removes this difficulty far more thoroughly than the difficulty of the English pronunciation can be overcome by a foreigner.

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The Russian noun has three genders and two numbers, like the Latin, and seven cases. Each gender is declined differently, but their plurals practically are identical, except for the genitive case, which causes some difficulty. The neuter singular does not materially differ from the masculine, but the feminine has totally different forms. What complicates the declension is the fact that words with a soft or palatalized ending have to be declined soft throughout, and there are very many variations in the genitive and prepositional cases, due chiefly to a confusion of the historic o and u declensions. Such forms can be acquired only through long practice. The dual of the Church Slavic has almost entirely disappeared, leaving but feeble traces in words naturally dual, such as that for "eye, ear." The most curious reminiscence of it is found after the numerals "two, three, four," when the noun stands in the genitive singular, because that form frequently corresponded to the nominative dual. From "five" on the genitive plural is used by analogy. The adjectival declension is interesting from the fact that by the side of an apocopated form of it, which almost entirely coincides with that of the noun and which is used only in the predicate, there is a fuller declension, formed originally from the nominal endings plus the corresponding endings of the personal pronoun of the third person, which was used as an article. Thus we have the curious phenomenon of a post-positive article, which is still in full use in Bulgarian, in existence in all the unrelated languages of the East, in the Scandinavian of Germanic origin, in all the Slavic languages, in Rumanian of Latin origin and in Albanian. The Russian is not fond of an attributive genitive and generally turns such into a corresponding adjective, hence it is far richer in adjectival forms than the languages of the West. The vast majority of family names ending in ov, in, ovich, ski, etc., are just such adjectives, hence the absence of titular von or de, or anything that corresponds to it, from the Russian vocabulary. The adjectives practically lack the superlative, which is supplied by the comparative or various intensive adjectives or particles. The chief difficulty in the formation of the comparative is the doubling of forms caused by drawing the apocopated comparative chiefly from the native Russian, and the full attributive comparative chiefly from the corresponding Church Slavic formation. The numerals are bothersome because every one of them is declined, and in a combination such as "one thousand two hundred and forty five men» six different declensional forms will occur. While the nominal declension is complex, the syntactical application of it is rather simple, because the abundance of cases, each one with a distinct function, obviates the difficulty which is ever present in a language without grammatical endings, such as French, where only the closest of attention makes one expert in the use of de and à. Thus Russian, though full of perplexing difficulties, has the unusual compensation of a language with a minimum of syntactical rules.

In the verb the relation between syntax and grammatical forms is reversed. Of the whole intricate structure of the Church Slavic, with its aorist and multiplicity of past tenses, very little is left. Only one, unconjugated past is

18

left. The future is a compound of I shall and the infinitive, but in a large class of verbs the present does duty for the future. Thus there is only one tense, the present, that really can cause difficulty, on account of a number of consonant changes that are liable to happen. There are only two conjugations, and a simple rule accounts for the great majority of the socalled second conjugation, leaving everything else to the first. There is a wealth of simple participial forms, which are also found apocopated and are called gerunds. These make it possible to express a large number of adverbial phrases in a very simple and precise way. But, to atone for the absence of a complicated conjugational system, there is the matter of aspects which to the beginner is likely to prove a stumbling block, but which supplies the language with a mass of delicate shades of expression which the Western languages can seldom render correctly. A verb expresses either the action, when it is of the imperfective aspect, or the result of an action, when it is of the perfective aspect. Most verbs have the two, and many are capable of even more delicate distinctions. An imperfective aspect may refer to an indefinite action or to an action with a definite aim; a perfective aspect may not only refer to the result of the action, but also to its suddenness, when it becomes self-active. In addition, there are iterative verbs, which represent frequently repeated action. Many verbs have all or nearly all of these forms, which differ from each other by suffixes and prefixes, added in a definite way. The perfective has only two tenses, the past and the future; the iterative only one, the past, and the imperfectives, all three. Only long training makes one perfect in the use of these, but in reading the matter is not of such pressing importance.

The Russian avoids the passive voice and has an exceedingly simple way of expressing the subjunctive, which is made up from the unconjugated past tense by the addition of a particle, but makes up these deficiencies not only by the very comprehensive aspects, but also by the use of a reflexive which does not differ from the rest of the verbs, except for the addition of the unchanged reflexive ending. Besides, a particular shade of involuntary action, such as to express the idea I want to eat, as the result of hunger, and not as a wilful act, is expressed by an impersonal construction, so that the ambiguity of the English is always avoided.

The sentence structure of Russian is simplicity itself. Though originally the Russian, through the Church Slavic, based its sentence on the periodic_Greek speech, Karamzin, who had studied in England, popularized the simple co-ordinate arrangement of clauses, as against the intricate and clumsy German subordinate periodic structure, and this simple style has remained the norm. The language is simple and direct. Add to this the facts that the order of words is quite immaterial, since it is guided exclusively by emphasis, that the indirect discourse is practically unknown and that a small basic number of words furnishes an inexhaustible number of derivatives of every imaginable shade of meaning, and it will become clear that the Russian language cannot possibly be so、 difficult as it is generally represented to be. The trouble is that all the troublesome points

are met with at the very start, but, while the difficulties of German, for example, keep increasing, the difficulties of Russian stop very soon. Thus in a given period, after the rudiments have been mastered, considerably faster progress can be made in Russian than in German.

As the Russian vowels are all open, except in specially favored positions, and the consonants are not harsh, the Russian language is particularly adapted to singing, even beyond Italian For literary purposes it is especially good, since the most difficult ideas of any literary language can be rendered with remarkable fidelity; hence Russian literature abounds in fine translations, whether of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Beranger or of any other foreign poet. The innate beauty of Russian has struck not only foreigners, but has long been known to the Russians, for already Lomonosov said of it, "One may find in it the magnificence of the Spanish, the vivacity of the French, the force of the German, the tenderness of the Italian, and, besides, the wealth and the expressive brevity of the Greek and the Latin," while Turgenev said of it that "it is unthinkable that such a language should not be given to a great nation."

Bibliography.— GENERAL: Jarintzov, N., "The Russians and Their Language; with an introduction discussing the problems of pronunciation and transliteration and preface by Nevill Forbes' (New York 1916); Leger, L., and Bardonnant, G., 'Les racines de la langue russe (Paris 1894); Mazon, A., Morphologie des aspects du verbe russé (Paris 1908).

GRAMMARS: Berneker, E., 'Russische Grammatik (Leipzig 1897); Boltz, A., Lehrgang der russischen Sprache) (Berlin 188084); Bondar, D., 'Simplified Russian Method, Conversational and Commercial' (London 1917); Dmitriewicz, N., Russishe Grammatik; enthält nebst ausführlichen, übersichtlich dargestellten Sprachregeln, einschliesslich der Akzentlehre, zahlreiche Übungsaufgaben und Lesestücke' (Lemberg 1891);. Forbes, N., 'First Russian Book,' (Second Russian Book,' 'Russian Grammar) (Oxford 1917); Magnus, L. A., Concise Grammar of the Russian Language) (New York 1916); Manasevitch, B., Die Kunst die russische Sprache durch Selbstunterricht schnell zu erlernen (Vienna 1897); Sieff, M., Volper's Russian Accidence in Tables (New York 1917). ACCENTS: Boyer, P., 'De l'accentuation du verbe russe (in 'Ecole des langues orientales vivantes) (1895); Pérot, G., L'accent tonique dans la langue russe (Lille 1900); Sharlovski, I., 'Russian Accent, in Russian (Vornezh 1883-89); id., 'Russian Prosody,' in Russian (Odessa 1890). READERS AND TEXTS: Forbes, N., Russian Readers (3 vols., New York 1917); Bondar, D., 'Russian Readers) (London 1915); Seiff, M., 'Manual of Russian Commercial Correspondence (New York 1917); Solomonoff, J., Russian Composition' (New York 1917); The First Russian Reader) (New York 1916); Tolstoy's Sevastapol (New York 1916); Chamaelon, A. P., Tchekhov' (New York 1916); 'Russian Reading Made Easy, consisting of anecdotes, dialogues, etc., with interlinear English translation and imitated pronunciation, and a modern Russian play, The Three Sisters, by Tchekhoff, in clear accented type, with literal

translation and explanatory notes (London 1916); (accented) Berneker, E., Russisches Lesebuch (Leipzig 1897). DICTIONARIES: (All Russian). 'Dictionary of the Russian Language (Imperial Academy of Sciences, Petrograd 1891; only two volumes have so far appeared of this new edition); (all Russian) Dal, V. I., Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language) (3d ed., 4 vols., Petrograd 1903-09); (with English) Aleksandrov, A., 'Complete Anglo-Russian Dictionary (Petrograd 1879); Complete Russian-English Dictionary) (ib. 1904); (with English) Freese, J. H., New Pocket Dictionary of the English and Russian Languages (New York 1916); (with English) Luboff, S. J., Handy Russian-English and English-Russian Dictionary and Self-Instruction (Philadelphia 1916); (with German) Pavlovski, I. Y., Russischdeutsches Wörterbuch) (2d ed., Riga 1879). LEO WIENER,

Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, Harvard University.

4. RUSSIAN LITERATURE. Nothing whatsoever is known of any literary activity in Russia previous to the introduction of Christianity in the 10th century, and even for a long period afterward it found its expression, not in Russian, but in the language of the Church, that of the proto-apostles Cyril and Methodius, which in all likelihood was the Bulgarian, as spoken in the neighborhood of Saloniki. This Old Church Slavic was close to the Russian dialects that it could be understood with little exertion by the clergy and those rare intellectuals who found any need to give expression to their thoughts. Up to the 12th century there is only a slim collection of sermons and exhortations, but at the end of this period we have the noteworthy Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh to his Children, which compares favorably with similar spiritual testaments of the period, such as that of Saint Stephen of Hungary. A little later we get the admirable account of the Holy Land by Abbot Daniel the Palmer, which even now elicits praise for its realistic account of the time of the first crusades. To the same period belongs Nestor's Chronicle of Kiev,' that set the pace for a considerable number of local chronicles, from which in modern times the history of ancient Russia has been reconstructed. There must have existed, at that time, a considerable secular literature, but the Church ruthlessly persecuted any such manifestation, and only folk epics, for the first time collected in the 19th century, give us any poetical reminiscences of Kiev in the days of its greatest glory. Only one literary production of exceptional beauty has escaped the persecution of the Church, 'The Word of Igor's Armament, a prose poem dealing with a disastrous expedition of Prince Igor against the nomad Polovtses of the South. This, too, was first published in the beginning of the 19th century, when it immediately attracted universal attention and was translated into many foreign languages. There also has been preserved a 14th century imitation of this production in 'The Exploits Beyond the Don,' which is an interesting account of the battle at Kulikovo in 1380. The Middle. Ages are in Russia unusually rich in a mass of apocryphal stories, bestiaries and romantic adventures, which serve as important links between the

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Greek and Latin apocryphal literature and similar productions in the West. As an example of these may serve 'The Holy Virgin's Descent into Hell,' which contains elements akin to those worked up by Dante in his 'Divine Comedy. No appreciable addition to literary style is to be observed before the 16th century, when Polish scholastic learning at Kiev began to penetrate into Russia at the same time that Western ideas found their way to Moscow through the protection given to foreigners by Ivan the Terrible. It is then that we get the feeble beginnings of Russian history by the exiled Andrey Kurbski and the 'Book of Management, the 'Domostroy,' by Ivan's adviser, Sylvester. This is apparently an attempt to create for Russia a manual of manners, such as at that time appeared in Italy and elsewhere. Its unusual harshness has made the 'Domostroy a by-word for the Asiatic rudeness of the pre-Petrine civilization. Only at the end of the 17th century does a weak light enter from the West in the writings of Simeon Polotski, who came entirely under the influence of the Kiev scholasticism. He thus precedes the period of Peter the Great, with whom a new era dawns upon Russia.

The

Peter the Great abolished the old Church script, and introduced in its place the modern alphabet, which leaned to some extent on the Latin script. With this, Peter the Great broke with the ecclesiastic tradition, and by degrees the vernacular Russian, at first strongly impregnated with the Church Slavic, makes its entrance into the written language. The time of Peter was productive only of utilitarian works on mathematics and the applied sciences, but we have even then the remarkable economic work The Book on Poverty and Wealth,' by Ivan Pososhkov, the peasant manufacturer, who was called the Russian Adam Smith. History of Russia' by Tatishchev did not see its light until the end of the century, as there was no interest as yet in such literary production in the time of Peter, but the Spiritual Reglement of Prokopovich, who advocated Peter's liberal reforms, was one of the first Russian books to be translated into English. Kantemir's satires, based on those of Boileau and Horace, appeared in the time of Queen Anna, and about the same time talentless Tredyakovski established the prosody for the Russian poetry, and a little later the manysided Lomonosov, in his poetical productions and scentific labors, laid the foundation for the literary norm, which half a century later was to be perfected in its present form by Karamzin. The second half of the 18th century is especially rich in the drama, where, however, nothing notable was produced, except in the comedy. Here we have the classical (Odd People, by Knyazhnin, The Minor,' by von Visin, and "The Pettifogger,' by Kapnist. Among the writers of historical dramas are Sumarokov, the creator of the Russian theatre; Knyazhnin, whose republican sentiments in Vadim of Novgorod' created quite a stir, and Ozerov, whose 'Dmitri Donskoy' appeared opportunely on the eve of the Napoleonic War. Catherine herself tried her hand at the drama of manners, and by her example encouraged the creation of the satirical journals, in which Novikov was most prominent.

The first half of the 18th century did not

rise above an imitation of the French pseudoclassic school, but toward the end of the century the English influence, especially that of Addison, becomes more prominent. In 1790 there appeared Radishchev's Journey from Saint Petersburg to Moscow,' whose very title indicates its obligation to Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey, and with it a spirit of liberalism, coupled with the sentimentality which held sway in the West, entered Russia. Of the poets of the time, who were also falling under Italian and Latin influence, the most prominent is Derzhävin, who bridges over from the 18th to the 19th century, and who, by his violent attack on the turgid ode of the preceding period, put an end to the slavish imitation of foreign models, and himself produced noteworthy poems. His 'Ode to the Deity' was translated into several languages and breathes an advanced Deism. Karamzin, who had lived in England, introduced the simpler English style into literature, and in his voluminous 'History of Russia, in his sentimental novels, such as the famous 'Poor Liza,' and in his many sentimental poems, made the Russian language a perfect vehicle of thought. The romantic movement, then prevalent in Germany, had little effect upon Russia. Kamenev's romantic poems and Zhukovski's excellent translations from the German did not create a school in Russia.

The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries are rich in talents who made the West accessible to Russia in all literary endeavors. The influence of the French fabulists, especially LaFontaine, is seen in Sumorokov, the dramatist, in the poet Maykov, in Izmaylov, but reaches its apogee in the genius Krylov, who entered the literary field with some mediocre comedies, but gained universal recognition by his a little more than 100 fables, less than two for each year of his life, because he was the first to place the foreign models in a distinctive Russian setting. The sentimentalism, which was introduced by Radishchev, found its continuators in a number of poets, among whom Kozlov (1779-1840) is probably the most talented. In Vyazemski (1792-1878) sentimentalism, which came otherwise to an end in the 40's, survived until the end of the 70's. These poets sang not only of solitude, but also of the gentle home associations and the awesome sentiment of religion in places sanctified by age, and thus they introduced the worship of antiquity, which found its expression in the laudation of Moscow and Kiev, and the holy places, and led to a series of poets, not distinctly sentimental, who may be denominated as the patriotic and religious poets. Thus Glinka (1788-1880) published a series, Spiritual Songs, and Rylyeev (17961826), by his historical ballads, in which there breathes a spirit of liberty, incurred the suspicion of the government, and was one of the literary lights to fall a victim of the December Revolution. The Italian influence, especially that of Tasso, is discernible in Bätyushkov (1787-1855), whose The Dying Tasso' is a poem of unusual merit, but who unfortunately was lost to literature for the last 35 years of his life, having become hopelessly insane.

In the drama Griboyedov (1795-1829) continued the tradition begun by Fonvizin and Kapnist, and his 'Intelligence Comes to Grief,'

in which he mercilessly flayed the old order of things, the servility, militarism and superficiality which harked back to the days of Catherine, remained for a long time a classic on the stage. The romantic movement of the English type, which reveled in the past and in adventure under exotic conditions, appealed to the younger generation in the beginning of the 19th century, and some notable results were achieved. Bestuzhev (1797-1837), who himself led a Byronic existence, wrote some good novels of martial adventure, such as 'Ammalat Bek,' and the historical novels of Lazhechnikov (1794-1869), 'The Heretic,' 'The Last Noviks,' The Ice House, have lately been resuscitated from oblivion and are read with pleasure. But the poets of this school, Pushkin (1799-1837) and Lermontov (1814-41) have gained the greatest reputation. Pushkin began his career with some extravagant romantic poems, but during his banishment to the Crimea and the Caucasus he found the proper setting for the Byronism which was then taking possession of the nation, and to this he gave utterance in 'The Bakhchisaray Fountain, The Gypsies,' "The Prisoner of the Caucasus, etc. His masterpiece is 'Evgeni Onyegin, a novel in verse, which is considered as the prototype of a long series of Russian novels, in which the Russian hero is discussed. He tried himself in the historical drama and produced 'Boris Godunov, a splendid poem, which is hardly fit for the stage. Having devoted himself to historical studies, he wrote A History of the Pugachev Rebellion,' and on his investigation based a series of stories, of which 'The Captain's Daughter' is probably the best. Lermontov even surpassed Pushkin in the facility of his verse, but his career was cut short at the age of 27, when he had already produced several volumes. Besides a number of tunable songs, he wrote a number of romantic poems, of which 'The Demon' is the most notable. Of his prose tales the most important is The Hero of Our Time,' which, as the title indicates, is a continuation of the question created by Pushkin in his 'Evgeni Onyegin, and the hero of this new novel is the same blasé type as created by the Byronic attitude of the time.

The first half of the 19th century was particularly rich in poets, and among them must especially be mentioned Koltsev (1808-42), because he followed out the suggestion made some time before by Delvig that the popular element should find a place in the artificial poetry, and created a series of scenes from the homely life of the peasant and laborer, which at once made the poetry accessible to the masses, who still read him. At the same time Gogol (1809-52) struck out in a similar direction, by depicting the life of his native Ukraine, and the sordid existence of the small officials. His short stories, "The Mantle,' 'The Nose, etc., were the forerunners of his own longer tales and of the whole mass of realistic stories with which Russian literature has enriched the world. His 'Dead Souls' shows his obligation to Cervantes, but the story, in which we get a series of pensketches of country people, is unique and true to life. His "The Revizor, the best-constructed comedy to be found anywhere, in which he depicted the rascality of town officials, has remained a classic