of Russia under Peter, the starting-point of the great classic literature of Russia cannot be placed much earlier than the latter half of the 18th century. To this period belong the initial stages of popular education, which owed much to the Freemasons, who included many men of intellect and of active benevolence. Byelinsky, the greatest literary critic that Russia has produced, dates the true beginning of Russian literature from the publication of 'The Ode on the Capture of Khotin.' This poem was from the pen of Lomonosov, a native of Archangel, of peasant birth, to whom was given the glory of first creating beauty of style from the Russian language. Lomonosov, though he stands so high in the annals of his native literature, is held in greater honour in foreign countries as a scientist. In the words of a learned American professor, 'Only when he described the phenomena of nature or scientific facts did he become truly inspired and write the poems that have survived him.'

Perhaps, at this point, we may digress for a moment, in order to draw attention to a curious lack in the history of Russian literature; it is the lack of influence, both as to form and matter, exercised by the Russian Bible. It has been often said that Shakespeare and the Bible are enough in themselves to form a literary style. In Russia, where this honour has been ascribed to Lomonosov, a man of only moderate genius, the Bible has played no such vitally important part; and this for several reasons. In the first place, the Russian Bible was not printed until 1580, more than a hundred years later than our own, and then in Slavonic only, which continues in use in the churches although it has long become a dead language to the laity. The Epistle to the Romans was printed in Russian in 1815, but it was not until 1875 that the Holy Synod published a complete Russian version of the Bible; and under the Imperial laws no other version of the Bible in Russian could be introduced into Russia. Thus a source to which English writers have owed so much has remained practically closed to Russian authors, who have nevertheless found in their native tongue an instrument capable of expressing the finest shades of meaning, with infinite varieties of rhythm and cadence.

It was the French literature of the revolutionary period that the Russians of the 18th century chose for their guide and model. Catherine the Great, who herself translated French plays for the Imperial stage, was for some years an ardent admirer of the French encyclopædists, of Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. But when the French revolution reached its climax, she became alarmed for her own security, and not only grew cold to the Continental progressives but proceeded to crush the society of Freemasons, which had grown rich and influential and exercised its power in the direction of spreading knowledge and publishing a quantity of books of an educational kind, at prices that brought them within the reach of the poorer classes. The leader of this altruistic crusade was a writer named Novikov, who became the head of a great printing and bookselling business in Moscow; but his former friendly relations with the Empress came to an end as soon as she realised that he was a serious reformer.

In spite of his widespread philanthropy and good works in a time of famine, Novikov was thrown into prison and condemned to death on a charge of conspiracy. The death sentence was not carried out, but he remained in close confinement in the terrible Schlüsselberg prison until Catherine was succeeded by her son, Paul I (1796). Another progressive writer of the same period, Radischev, was similarly treated, and after many years of exile in the remotest part of Siberia, was released at length, only to end his life by suicide, in despair of the conditions of his countrymen. The publications of both these men were confiscated and destroyed; but not before they had sown seed that was destined to flower in the inspired verse of Russia's greatest poet.

We have now reached the critical period of transition in politics and literature, and of open conflict between the forces of reaction and progress. It is a remarkable feature of Russian Liberalism that it has, as a rule, emanated in the first place from the upper ranks of society. The spirit of change, stirred into activity by the French revolution, was manifest among the highest in the land, long before it reached the lower class. The accession of Alexander I was signalised by the wane of

German influence in Court circles, where it had roused the bitter jealousy and enmity of the Russian nobility during the reign of Paul. Alexander set himself to the reform of abuses and the spread of popular education; but unfortunately the measures he passed were not sufficiently radical to fulfil their purpose. It is noteworthy that he found not only the military caste, but the leading writers of the time, in opposition to his reforms; but, in spite of lack of support from those who should have been most eager to second his efforts, he favoured the diffusion of knowledge to a degree beyond any of his predecessors. It was he who authorised the English Bible Society to extend its work to Russia.

The writings of two great men of letters, the historian Karamzin and the poet Batiouchkov, reveal how closely interwoven with social and political interests was the intellectual life of the early 19th century. In his 'History of Russia,' Karamzin upholds the autocratic system and extols the past glories of the Slavonic race. He may be said to have been the originator of Slavophilism in politics and literature.

'Russian history,' he writes, 'casts lustre on our land. How strangely and wonderfully drawn we are to the banks of the Volga, Dnieper, and the Don, knowing as we do what happened there in remote antiquity! Not only Novgorod, Kiev, and Vladimir, but even the huts of Eletz, Kozelsk, and Galich become of monumental interest. . . . The shadows of past centuries rise in visions before our eyes.'

The Napoleonic invasion roused the nation to patriotic fervour, which found expression in the poetry of the time; but unhappily little was achieved beyond the awakening of futile hopes, which finally culminated in the tragedy of the Decembrist conspiracy. Ryléev, a brilliant young writer, died on the scaffold in the prime of manhood, but was already known throughout Russia as the author of a number of fine patriotic ballads, and of a poem descriptive of the struggle for liberty of Little Russia under the famous Hetman Mazeppa, ending in the disastrous defeat of Charles XII at Poltava.

Ryléev died untimely, but he was followed and eclipsed by his friend and admirer Pushkin, by general consent the greatest of Russian poets. It is not too much

to say that Pushkin was the first truly national poet of Russia, and the first to make Russian poetry admired and honoured beyond her frontiers, just because he threw off the domination of foreign influence so noticeable in the works of his forerunners, and clothed his thought in purely Russian dress. Eugene Onéguine, Pushkin's chief hero, is typically Russian. He is the prototype of the superfluous man, of whom we have many later examples, such as the Oblomov' of Goncharov. Talented and amiable, but wanting in energy and steadfastness of purpose, he seems to have been oppressed and paralysed by the vastness and inertia of the land of his birth. It is a type that still exists in Russian life and fiction, that of the man who meditates on the meaning of life, without ever coming to a conclusion, who aspires to greatness and has transient fits of energy, but quickly lapses back into indolence and apathy. He is ever waiting for the vital spark that will fire his energies; but in waiting life passes, and is ended before he is aware. The character of the heroine, with whom Onéguine only falls in love when she is married to another, shows on the other hand strength, dignity, and fortitude. The love she felt for Onéguine in her girlhood does not change, but she resists him none the less, when at length, too late, he returns it.

Pushkin owed much to childish associations, to the fireside folk-tales of his old nurse and the familiar talk of the peasants on his estate. Homely everyday modes of expression, details of life and character slighted by lesser men as unworthy of regard, all went to give his verse the essentially Russian spirit which till then had been absent from Russian poetry. The depth of thought and mystic intensity of a Milton, a Wordsworth, a Goethe, were not within his province, but his lyric melody, vivacity, and ease are untranslatable and perhaps unrivalled.

With Pushkin one associates the name of Lermontov, whose poem on the death of the former occasioned his exile to the Caucasus. Lermontov has been compared to Byron, but probably, if a comparison is worth making, he had more in common with Shelley than with any other English poet. He was a devoted lover of the wild beauty of the Caucasus; and his finest poems, such as 'The Vol. 235.-No. 466.

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Demon,' are those inspired by Caucasian legends. He is, however, better known to English readers as the author of a novel translated under the title A Hero of our Times.' The scene is laid at Piatigorsk, a fashionable inland watering-place at the foot of the Caucasian mountains, much frequented by Russians of the upper class. The hero Petchorin is of the usual type. A military dandy, well-born, intellectual, cynical, and inconstant, his love-affairs end in satiety, and the story closes in the vein of melancholy characteristic of Russian novels.

After Pushkin and Lermontov, the whole range of Russian literature widens out. Literary stars appear not singly but in groups and constellations, and their light penetrates to the lowest planes of the social scale. The general tendency and character of Russian literature in recent times may be defined as realistic, psychological, and pessimistic. The most uncompromising realism is evident in the studies of actual life taken from all classes of people. Idealism, as we understand it, is practically absent; while the psychology of the Russian school of fiction is carried far deeper than anywhere in English literature.

Turguenev, in his 'Sportsman's Tales,' which are presented as light sketches of country life, incidentally exposes the cruelty and selfishness of the landlord class, and the miseries of the serf. Gogol, his senior by nine years, had undermined the whole fabric of Russian society by attacking the serf-owner; and Tolstoy, after apparently acquiescing in the status quo of rich and poor in War and Peace,' and 'Anna Karenina,' became the greatest iconoclast of these three. These great pillars of the Temple of Russian literature undoubtedly prepared the way for a social revolution, by sweeping aside the glamour that surrounded an hereditary landed aristocracy, and, not satisfied with arraigning the ruling section of the community, poured unmeasured scorn upon the idlers, the futile dreamers and ineffectual altruists whose flow of talk achieved no tangible result whatever.

In Turguenev's principal novels we find a succession of Onéguines and Petchorins. Let us take Rudin in the novel of that name. Rudin associates with the nobility on terms of equality, without having an assured position