The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing—­if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure impeding—­forces.  That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was national—­that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other languages, than the production of originality in his own.

This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter’s time

     “A Babylonish dialect;”

the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms which might have been—­have, indeed, since been—­translated into words of Russian form and origin.  A review of the literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of translations, but very few original productions.

From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note:  we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.

At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages—­the Slavonic, to which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia.

The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably raise a smile on the reader’s lip; but the difficulty of establishing this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon the circumstance, that the literature is—­as we have stated—­divisible into two distinct and widely differing regions.  It will be sufficiently accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a century back from the present time; and to consider Lomonosoff as its founder.  Mikhail Vassilievitch Lomonosoff, born in 1711, is the author who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the North:  a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of science.  An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles he had fixed as a grammarian.