rner compared with a
Constable or a Bonnington.

Lermontov followed up his first draft of _The Demon_ (originally
planned in 1829, but not finished in its final form until 1841) with
other romantic tales, the scene of which for the most part is laid in
the Caucasus: such as _Izmail Bey_, _Hadji-Abrek_, _Orsha the
Boyar_--the last not a Caucasian tale. These were nearly all of them
sketches in which he tried the colours of his palette. But with
_Mtsyri_, _the Novice_, in which he used some of the materials of the
former tales, he produced a finished picture.

_Mtsyri_ is the story of a Circassian orphan who is educated in a
convent. The child grows up home-sick at heart, and one day his
longing for freedom becomes ungovernable, and he escapes and roams
about in the mountains. He loses his way in the forest and is brought
back to the monastery after three days, dying from starvation,
exertion, and exhaustion. Before he dies he pours out his confession,
which takes up the greater part of the poem. He confesses how in the
monastery he felt his own country and his own people forever calling,
and how he felt he must seek his own people. He describes his
wanderings: how he scrambles down the mountain-side and hears the song
of a Georgian woman, and sees her as she walks down a narrow path with
a pitcher on her head and draws water from the stream. At nightfall he
sees the light of a dwelling-place twinkling like a falling star; but
he dares not seek it. He loses his way in the forest, he encounters
and kills a panther. In the morning, he finds a way out of the woods
when the daylight comes; he lies in the grass exhausted under the
blinding noon, of which Lermontov gives a gorgeous and detailed
description--

"And on God's world there lay the deep
And heavy spell of utter sleep,
Although the landrail called, and I
Could hear the trill of the dragonfly
Or else the lisping of the stream ...
Only a snake, with a yellow gleam
Like golden lettering inlaid
From hilt to tip upon a blade,
Was rustling, for the grass was dry,
And in the loose sand cautiously
It slid, and then began to spring
And roll itself into a ring,
Then, as though struck by sudden fear,
Made haste to dart and disappear."

Perishing of hunger and thirst, fever and delirium overtake him, and
he fancies that he is lying at the bottom of a deep stream, where
speckled fishes are playing in the crystal wa