the noble and interesting language of the
country, an intention of remaining here long enough to learn it, he was
often discouraged by the belief, that the literature was too poor to
repay his time and labour. Besides, the Russian language has so little
relation to the other European tongues--it stands so much alone, and
throws so little direct light upon any of them, that another obstacle
was thrown into his way.

The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all
derived, more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the
whole south and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon
the other cognate dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental
tongues facilitates, nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand
others, which are less languages of distinct type than dialects of the
same speech, offshoots from the same stock.

Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in
every disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German
periodicals with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched
rags of translation which are all that has been hitherto done towards
the reproduction, in our own language, of the literature of Russia.
These versions were made by persons utterly unacquainted with the
country, the manners, and the people, or made after the Russian had been
distilled through the alembic of a previous French or German
translation.

Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation
sooner than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than
honourable to the literary enterprise of England, that the present is
the first attempt to introduce to the British public any work of Russian
Prose Fiction whatever, with any thing like a reasonable selection of
subject and character, at least _directly_ from the original language.

The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of
"Russian Anthology," and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would
appear at first sight an exception to that indifference to the
productions of Russian genius of which we have accused the English
public; and the popularity of that collection would be an additional
encouragement to the hope, that our charge may be, if not ill-founded,
at least exaggerated.

We are willing to believe, that the degree--if we are rightly informed,
no slight one--of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in
England, wa