In purely poetical creations, this great poet shows his full power.  In a beautiful tale, Pan Tadeusz, “Sir Thaddeus,” (Paris 1834,) which, though in verse, may be considered as a novel, he very graphically described the civil and domestic life existing in Lithuania immediately before the war of 1812; and gave also further evidence of his genius by several smaller poems.  He is, however, not very productive; a striking peculiarity of Slavic poets.

The principal poets of the modern romantic school in Poland, of which Mickiewicz must be considered the founder, are the following: 

A.E.  Odyniec and Julian Korssak, both chiefly known by happy translations from the English; but also not without creative power of their own.  Anton Malczeski is the author of a poetical tale, Maria,[85] perhaps the most popular production of the Polish literature.  It is a touching family legend, traditional in the noble house of Potocki in Volhynia; but transposed by Malczeski to the Ukraine, and connected in that way with graphic descriptions of this latter country.  Malczeski lived a life of wild adventures; and died young, not yet 34 years old, in 1826.

The Ukraine appears to be, on the whole, one of the favourite theatres for the romantic school of Polish poets.  Zaleski, Gosczynski, Grabowski, all of them poets of more than ordinary talents, give us pictures of this country, alternately sweet and rough, wild and romantic.  There must necessarily be some mixture of attractive and repulsive elements here even for native poets; for the common people are Russians, and hate the Polish nobility as their oppressors.  Nevertheless Thomas Padura, another of the young Polish school, chose even the dialect of the Ruthenian peasantry for his songs.  Another Polish poet, who has selected the Ukraine for the theatre of most of his tales, is Michael Czaykowski; he too is considered as standing at the head of the novel writers of his country.  His legends of the Kozaks[86], his tales, Wernyhora[87], Kirdzali, the Hetman of the Ukraine[88], etc. manifest a more than common talent.

To the poetical literature of the Polish emigrants belong further the works of A. Gorecki, Garczinski, J. Slawacki, but, above all, of count Ignatius Krasinski; not the same individual who wrote a history of the Reformation in Poland in the English language[89].  He is by many of his countrymen considered as their greatest living poet.  Most of his productions are enveloped in a certain mystical atmosphere, which renders a commentary necessary in order to understand them.  Two dramatic poems, one called, in contrast to Dante, “The Undivine Comedy;” the other, “Irydion,” an illustration of Schiller’s stern apothegm, that “the history of the world is the judgment of the world;” [90] are regarded as his most powerful productions[91].