us
translations from foreign languages before entering the Moscow
University, at the age of fifteen. During a visit which he made to St.
Petersburg, while still a student at the University, he saw the theater
for the first time, and soon made acquaintance with F. G. Volkhoff
(already mentioned), and one of the actors. These things exerted a great
influence upon him. During a visit of the Court to Moscow, in 1755, he
was appointed translator to the Foreign College (Office), with the
inevitable military rank, and went to live in the new capital. After
divers vicissitudes of service, he wrote "The Brigadier," which he was
promptly asked to read before royalty and in society. It won for him
great reputation with people who were capable of appreciating the first
play which was genuinely Russian in something more than externals. It
jeers at ignorance coated over with an extremely thin veneer of
pretentious foreign culture. The types in "The Brigadier" (written about
1747) had long been floating about in literature, and as it were,
awaiting a skillful pen which should present them in full relief to the
contemporary public. Von Vizin set forth these types on the stage in a
clearer, more vivid manner than all previous writers who had dealt with
them, as we have seen, in satires and dramas, from Kantemir to Katherine
II. The characters, as Von Vizin depicted them, were no longer abstract
monsters, agglomerations of evil qualities, but near relations to
everybody. Moreover, the drama was gay, playful--not even the moral was
gloomy--with not a single depressing line.

Totally different is "The Hobbledehoy" ("Nedorosl," 1782), which is even
more celebrated, and was written towards the close of a long career in
the service, filled with varied and trying experiences--part of which
arose from the difficulties of the author's own noble character in
contact with a different type of men and from his attacks on abuses of
all sorts--after a profound study of life in the middle and higher
classes of Russian court and diplomatic circles. The difference between
"The Brigadier" and "The Hobbledehoy" is so great that they must be read
in the order of their production if the full value of the impression
created by the earlier play is to be appreciated. "The Hobbledehoy" was
wholly unlike anything which had been seen hitherto in Russian
literature. Had the authorities permitted Von Vizin to print his
collection of satires, he would have stood at t