not one friend would stand, a brother, by my side;
And the far hills alone, and woods in silence dreaming,
And the calm muses then would list with kindly seeming."

The influence exerted upon our poet's mind and productions by the
Byronian spirit, to which we alluded a few pages back, may be traced, in
very perceptible degree, in the next poem which he gave to the public,
"The Fountain of Bakhtchisarai," a work in which is reflected, as
vividly as it is in the storied waters of the fount from which it takes
its name, all the wealth, the profuse and abounding loveliness, of the
luxurious clime of the Tauric Chersonese. The scene of the poem is one
of the most romantic spots in that divine land; and the ruined palace
and "gardens of delight" which once made the joy and pride of the mighty
khans--the rulers of the Golden Horde--is perhaps not inferior, as a
source of wild legend and picturesque fairy lore--certainly not
inferior in the eyes of a Russian reader--to the painted halls and
fretted colonnades of the Alhambra. The success instantly obtained and
permanently enjoyed by this exquisite poem must be attributed to
something more than the profusion and beauty of the descriptive
passages, so thickly and artfully interwoven with the action of the
tale--a species of wealth and profusion, it may be remarked, which suits
well with the oriental character of the story, and with the abounding
loveliness of the scenery amid which that action is supposed to take
place. In this poem, too, we may remark the first decided essay made by
the poet towards delineating and contrasting, in an artistic manner, the
characters of human personages. The dramatic opposition between the two
principal characters of the tale, Maria and Zarema, is well conceived
and most skilfully executed. This poem first appeared in 1824, and was
reprinted in 1827, 1830, 1835. The powers of dramatic delineation which
may be seen, as it were, in embryo in this work, were to be still
further developed in Pushkin's next production, which was begun in the
same year, (1824,) and appeared in 1827. Those powers, too, were
destined to be exhibited in their full splendour in a historical
tragedy--perhaps the finest which the Russian literature can be said to
possess. The work to which we have alluded as being the second trial of
his wings in the arduous regions of dramatic creation, was the short but
exquisite tale entitled "The Gipsies." This tale, which is estee