rlinsky _far_ superior to him in a poetical respect. There
is a vigour, a freshness, an originality, in some of his descriptions,
which would class him among true poets, even when stripped of the
novelty of the scenery among which they are laid, and which gives them
indeed a peculiar attraction. Nothing was more natural nor even more
honourable to the Russian public, than that, as an unavoidable effect
of the pity and interest felt for this young writer, his real talent
should have been for a short time overrated. But even after his death,
it seems that the government regarded this enthusiasm with suspicion;
for in a literary collection in which the unprinted works of one
hundred writers are promised,[44] accompanied by their portraits,
Marlinsky's portrait was not permitted to appear.

The attention of the Russian literati has been for some time directed
mainly by the Germans to their own treasures of popular poetry. They
are particularly rich in nursery tales, for which the nation indeed
has always had a great fondness; but which, during an age of a false
pedantic taste, were after all not thought worthy of literary
preservation until of late. In close connection with this subject is
the cultivation of popular dialects. Grebenko and Kwitka, the latter
under the name of Osnovianenko, wrote their charming novels in the
Malo-Russian or Ruthenian dialect. Several writers of talent, natives
of Malo-Russia, endeavoured to establish their language as a literary
language in opposition to the Great Russian. The judiciousness of
these proceedings, especially as the Russian literature has hardly
passed from childhood to youth, would seem very questionable, even if
their practicability was settled.

As to poetry, the reader will be surprised to hear, that Russian
critics themselves think the short-lived flower of the Russian soil
already in danger of fading; the productiveness of their poets being
already apparently on the decline. No genius has risen as a rival to
Pushkin. Alexander Pushkin, born 1799, showed his uncommon talents
early; he was educated at one of the imperial Institutes, and was in
the service of the government; when an Ode to Liberty, written in too
bold a spirit, induced the emperor Alexander to banish him from St.
Petersburg. He obtained however employment in the southern provinces
of Russia; and life in these wild and poetical regions was more
favourable to the development of his genius, than that of the cap