that the
various passages, which these quotations are adduced to illustrate, will
be sufficiently perceptible, without our submitting to the necessity of
appending them in the form of marginal annotations or foot-notes, a
necessity which would force us to load the text with those unsightly
appendages to books in general, and to poetry in particular--the
asterisks and daggers of marginal reference.

The supposed soliloquy of the martyred poet, which forms the principal
portion of Pushkin's elegiac ode, is little else than an amplification,
or pathetic and dignified paraphrase, of the exquisite composition
actually written by Chenier on the eve of his execution; a composition
become classical in the French literature:--

"Comme un dernier rayon, comme un dernier zephyr
Anime le soir d'un beau jour,
Au pied de l'echafaud j'essaie encore ma lyre."

Of the few persons to whom allusion is made in the verses, _Abel_,
_Fanny_, and the _Captive Maid_, all that it is necessary to know is,
that the first was one of his friends, the companion of his early
happiness, and the fellow-labourer of his early studies--"Abel, doux
confidant de mes jeunes mysteres;" the second, one of his mistresses;
and the third, a young lady, Mlle. de Coigny, who was for some time his
fellow-prisoner, and the person to whom the poet addressed the touching
verses which we have mentioned above. Mlle. de Coigny was the "Jeune
Captive."

In justification of the very emphatic tone in which Pushkin has recorded
the noble generosity and self-sacrifice which conducted Chenier to the
revolutionary scaffold, it will be sufficient to quote the words of De
la Touche, and to refer the reader to Chenier's Iambics, which drew down
upon his head, and with good cause, the hatred and suspicion of
Robespierre and his subordinate demons:--"Chenier avait merite la haine
des factieux. Il avait celebre Charlotte Corday, fletri Collot
d'Herbois, attaque Robespierre. On sait que le Roi avait demande a
l'Assemblee par une lettre pleine de calme et de dignite, le droit
d'appeler au peuple du jugement qui le condamnait. Cette lettre, signee
dans la nuit du 17 au 18 Janvier, est d'Andre Chenier."--H. DE LA
TOUCHE.

The unfortunate poet was executed on the 8th of Thermidor; _i.e._ the
day before the fall of Robespierre. The fatal tumbril which bore Chenier
to the guillotine, conveyed also to the same scaffold the poet Roucher,
his friend:--"Ils parlerent de la poesie a l