The beauties of Karamzin’s style are so entirely idiomatic, that no one, who is not perfectly and thoroughly acquainted with the language, is able to appreciate in what the charm of his writings consists.  To foreigners of sound critical taste, on the contrary, the productions of his early life exhibit an affectation, a pretension to feeling, and an emptiness of original thought, sometimes quite intolerable.  And as to the more condensed and exact style of his great historical work, even the highest beauties of diction, and the acknowledged diligence and accuracy of the writer’s examination of facts, could never reconcile us to that want of truth, which, without wresting the fact itself, impresses upon it a false character by the whole colouring and mode of representation.  Over the characteristic barbarism of ancient times his dexterous hand throws a veil of embellishment, and lends a spirit of chivalry and romantic charm to historical persons and deeds, where all the circumstances of place and time stand in absolute contradiction to it.  Not seldom do we seem to be perusing a novel.

By this mode of proceeding he of course flattered the national feelings of his countrymen; and thus gained their approbation and applause, in the same measure that he disgusted all other nations.  His History of Russia will nevertheless remain a standard work in Slavic literature, partly on account of the copiousness of its sources, partly because of the great learning and research displayed by its author.

In respect to Karamzin’s innovations on the language, his influence was early counterbalanced.  He considered the French or English mode of construction as better adapted to the present state of the Russian language, than that imitation of the classical structure, which had hitherto given to the Russian prose writings so stiff and awkward an air.  He himself adopted with ease and gracefulness the peculiarities of these modern languages; but a portion of his followers thought to reach the same object by introducing Gallicisms.  Just at the proper time an opposition was formed; the head of which, Admiral Shishkof, insisted upon preserving the influence of the Church Slavonic upon the Russian language; and reproached Karamzin with having injured the purity of the latter by the introduction of foreign forms.  These two parties, which still divide the Russian literature in some measure, are called the Russian and Slavonic, or also the Moscow and St. Petersburg parties.

Not much less influence than Karamzin on the Russian prose, has Ivan Dmitrief, born 1760, exercised on poetry.  He had more taste and purity than any of his predecessors; and was the first to prove by a great many poetical tales, fables, odes, etc. that imagination and correctness of language are not incompatible.  The most successful of his followers are the following: