. In joyful Russia. chemist andan astronomer. He discovered laws of Nature. He in-vented apparatus and machinery of no mean discovered the atmosphere of Venus. He discoveredthat amber was of vegetable origin, and that peaty soil,under certain gaseous influences, produced coal. He out-stripped Franklin in many ways in Franklins own specialline; and yet physics was only one of the many importantsciences and philosophies in which this mighty-mindedEussian was greatly accomplished. He was a linguist anda linguistic essayist. He was a critic, a grammarian andstylist, a rhetorician, a
. In joyful Russia. chemist andan astronomer. He discovered laws of Nature. He in-vented apparatus and machinery of no mean discovered the atmosphere of Venus. He discoveredthat amber was of vegetable origin, and that peaty soil,under certain gaseous influences, produced coal. He out-stripped Franklin in many ways in Franklins own specialline; and yet physics was only one of the many importantsciences and philosophies in which this mighty-mindedEussian was greatly accomplished. He was a linguist anda linguistic essayist. He was a critic, a grammarian andstylist, a rhetorician, a poet, and an orator. He was anartist (artist, mark you, not amateur!) in mosaic work. He is the man of genius who, for the first time sincethe introduction into Eussia of the intellectual and insome directions material foreign ascendancy by the TsarPeter, gave an organ to the old Eussian national feeling,while he at the same time made himself its poetical ex-ponent and its practical champion—the latter being car-. SLAVIC LITERATURE. 261 ried out to the most infatuated chauvinism. His greatreputation in this generation, when his poetry is no longerread, depends on the fact that it was he who gave the firstimpulse toward the liberation of the Eussian intellectuallife and of Eussian science, then just dawning from theforeign, and especially from the German yoke. True, all true, and much more than this is true; buthe was bombastic in style. He tore the literature of Eus-sia away from its old roots. He inaugurated a school ofletters as far as possible away from the simple ballads ofthe people. To him the dress of the poem was everything,the heart but little. Language and manner outweighedthought and feeling. The reading of his life is interesting even beyond thepoint where interest becomes fascination. He must al-ways be remembered as one of the worlds really great men,and as the father of modern Eussian literature. He wasthe forerunner of Turgenef, of Dostoyevski, and of Tol-stoi
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