These two years of unwilling retirement worked mightily upon the soul of Pushkin so filled with storm and stress.  He struck off the chains of Byron and steeped himself in Shakespeare; writing at this period his drama of Boris Godunow.  Nicholas First amnestied the poet and recalled him to Moscow, instituting himself censor of all future work; likewise placing Pushkin under the all-powerful Chief of Police Count Benkendorff, from whom Lermontoff later had also so much to suffer.  In 1829 Pushkin went to the Caucas and with the Russian army to Erzum.  In 1830 he inherited from his father the management of But Boldino, where he finished “Onegin,” and three other dramas.  In 1831 he was married at Moscow to Natalie Nikolajewa Gontsharowa, whose beauty had for three years held him in her toils.  In the same year he was appointed to the foreign office again.  In 1833 the poem was published that won him his fatal commission.  Pushkin fell, as did Lermontoff later, a victim of the envy and hatred of high society.  At this time many responsible positions were held in Russia by Frenchmen who had fled the terrors of the revolution.  Such a French emigre was D’Anthes, who pursued the wife of Pushkin with his compromising attentions, until at a ball the poet was almost forced to challenge him.  The pistol duel, that Count Benkendorff with cunning foresight did nothing to prevent, took place June 27, 1837.  In two days the poet was free from his tormentors forever.  He was buried in the Swatjatorgorische cloister and statues have been erected to his honor at Petersburg, Moscow and many other cities throughout Russia.  His service to Russian literature can only be compared with that of Dante for Italy,—­since there was practically no Russian poetry before Pushkin and he may be said to have created the Russian language as it is spoken to-day.

MICHAIL JURJEWITSCH LERMONTOFF was born October 14, 1814, at Moscow.  From his father he inherited the love of brilliant society, from his mother the love of music and an unusually sensitive temperament.  When he was but two and a half years old his mother died and he became the idol of his grandmother, by whom he was spoiled, until the wilfulness of youth became the arrogance and domineering quality so distinguishing his maturity.  Being a delicate child, his grandmother took him at the age of ten to the Caucas,—­which he deeply loved ever after.  In 1827 he was placed in the Adelige Pension at Moscow, having been previously much influenced by a German nurse who inspired him with a love of German legend and poetry, and also by his tutor, an officer in the Napoleonic guard, who had taught him French.  Up to 1831 he was under the German unfluence [Transcriber’s note:  sic] in literature, but then he came under the influence of Byron, and from this time he was never free of the impression of the poet so congenial to his own spirit and nature.  In 1830 he was matriculated by the Moscow University as a student of moral and