It is always painful to find fault—­more painful to criticise with severity—­the work of a person whose motive was the same as that which actuates the present publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness[2] exhibited in the versions in question tends to give a false and disparaging idea of the value and the tone of Russian poetry, we may be excused for our apparent uncourteousness in thus pointing out their defects.

[2] In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be required of us.  Though we might fill many pages with instances of the two great sins of the translator, commission and omission, the poco piu and poco meno, we will content ourselves with taking, ad aperturam libri, an example.  At page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring’s Russian Anthology, will be found a short lyric piece of Dmitrieff, entitled “To Chloe.”  It consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines.  Of these five stanzas, three have a totally different meaning in the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look for in vain in the original.  This carelessness is the less excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style, subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty to a translator.  Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece in question was taken at random,) it will not be necessary to dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through Bowring’s versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of the Russian metres—­sins against costume, as, for example, the making a hussar (a Russian hussar) swear by his beard, &c. &c. &c.

It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a brief sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin, growth, and fortunes of which are marked by much that is peculiar.  In doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas, suddenly into light.

In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety, though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more fully the intellectual annals of Russia.

In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril[3] and Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostislaff, Sviatopolk, and Kotsel, then chiefs of the Moravians.

     [3] Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this
     important personage, his real name was Constantine.

The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,[4] to add a number of other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic.  So closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any necessity.