which he garnered up during this pilgrimage--so
peculiarly attractive to a poet, as combining the pleasure of travelling
with the splendour and picturesque novelties of a military march--by the
letters in which he has described his impressions during this
interesting period. These letters are models of simplicity, grace, and
interest, and have become classical in the Russian language.

In 1830, Baron Delvig commenced the publication of the _Literary
Gazette_, an undertaking in which Pushkin took as active and zealous an
interest as he had done in the _Northern Flowers_, edited by his friend
and schoolfellow. He not only contributed many beautiful poems to this
periodical, but also several striking prose tales and other papers, in
which, by the elegance and brilliancy of the style, and the acuteness
and originality of the thoughts, the public found no difficulty in
identifying Pushkin, though they appeared anonymously. He now visited
Moscow, in order to superintend the printing of his _Boris Godunoff_,
the tragedy which he had been so long engaged in polishing and
completing, and respecting the success of which he appears to have been
more anxious than usual, as he determined to write himself the preface
to this work. The subject of this tragedy is the well-known episode of
Russian history which placed Boris upon the throne of the Tsar; and
writers have taken various views of the character of the hero of this
scene, Pushkin representing Boris as the assassin of the son of Ivan
IV., while the ancient chroniclers, and the modern historians in
general, as Ustrialoff, Pogodin, Kraevskii, &c. &c., concur in asserting
that that prince was elected by the clergy and the people. Whatever may
be the historical truth of the design, Pushkin has given us in this
tragedy a dramatic picture full of spirit, of passion, of character, and
of life; and some of the personages, particularly those of the pretender
Dimitri, and the heroine Marina, are sketched with a vigorous and
flowing pencil. The _form_ of this play is ostensibly Shakspearian; but
it appears to us to resemble less the works of Shakspeare himself, than
some of the more successful imitations of the great dramatist's
manner--as, for instance, some parts of the Wallenstein. As to the
language and versification, it is in blank verse, and the style is
considered by Russians as admirable for ease and flexibility. At this
time Pushkin's life was about to undergo a great change; he w