and children after
his decease in 1826. [32]

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 call