769-1816), both enjoyed great fame in their day. Dmitrieff,
while under the guidance of Karamzin, making sentimentalism the ruling
feature in Russian epic and lyric poetry, perfected both the general
style of Russian verse, and the material of the light, poetical
language. Ozeroff, under the same influence and tendency, aided in the
final banishment from the Russian stage of pseudo-classical ideals and
dramatic compositions constructed according to theoretical rules.
Dmitrieff's most prominent literary work was a translation of La
Fontaine's Fables, and some satirical writings. Ozeroff, in 1798, put on
the stage his first, and not entirely successful, tragedy, "Yaropolk and
Oleg."[7] His most important work, both from the literary and the
historical points of view--although not so regarded by his
contemporaries--was his drama "Fingal," founded on Ossian's Songs, and
is a triumph of northern poetry and of the Russian tongue, rich in
picturesqueness, daring, and melody. His contemporaries regarded "Dmitry
Donskoy" as his masterpiece, although in reality it is one of the least
noteworthy of his compositions, and it enjoyed a brilliant success.

But the most extreme and talented disciples of the Karamzin school were
Vasily Andreevitch Zhukovsky (1783-1852) and Konstantin Nikolaevitch
Batiushkoff (1786-1855), who offer perfectly clear examples of the
transition from the sentimental to the new romantic school, which began
with Pushkin. Everything of Zhukovsky's that was original, that is to
say, not translated, was an imitation, either of the solemn, bombastic
productions of the preceding poets of the rhetorical school, or of the
tender, dreamy, melancholy works of the sentimental school, until he
devoted himself to translations from the romantic German and English
schools. He was not successful in his attempts to create original
Russian work in the romantic vein; and his chief services to Russian
literature (despite the great figure he played in it during his day)
must be regarded as having consisted in giving romanticism a chance to
establish itself firmly on Russian soil; and in having, by his splendid
translations, among them Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," Byron's "The
Prisoner of Chillon," and de la Mott Fouque's "Undine," brought Russian
literature into close relations with a whole mass of literary models,
enlarged the sphere of literary criticism, and definitively deprived
pseudo-classical theories and models of all forc