Nikolai Shcherbina, a Russian poet of mixed Cossack and Greek descent, is known first and foremost for his unusually personal "Greek" poems and his bilious, malevolent epigrams. He also wrote philosophical and nature poetry and civic verse (called iamby, after the ancient Greek form dominated by invective against contemporary ills), collected Russian folk songs, and published in his later years a much-reprinted collection of didactic readings for the lower classes. Among contemporaries he was known as a wit and improviser with a punishing tongue. His roots were in the impoverished nobility, and his political leanings, though progressive initially, made a radical turn to the right after the Great Reforms. Shcherbina was indisputably a poet of some originality. His Greek poems won him immediate, widespread--if short-lived--popularity among the Russian reading public. His epigrams and satires were circulated by contemporaries in several handwritten copies. Shcherbina is generally recognized as one...