tic affection cherished for _Pan Tadeasz_ by the great body
of the Polish people. Perhaps no poem of any other European nation is so
truly national and in the best sense of the word popular. Almost every
Pole who has read anything more than the newspaper is familiar with the
contents of _Pan Tadeusz_. No play of Shakespeare, no long poem of Milton
or Wordsworth or Tennyson, is so well known or so well beloved by the
English people as is _Pan Tadeusz_ by the Poles. To find a work equally
well known one might turn to Defoe's prosaic tale of adventure, _Robinson
Crusoe_; to find a work so beloved would be hardly possible.

_Pan Tadeasz_ is so clear and straightforward in its appeal that but few
words of explanation in regard to its origin are required. Its author,
Adam Mickiewicz, was born in 1798, near Nowogrodek in Lithuania. His
father, a member of the poorer gentry of the district, was a lawyer by
profession, so that the boy was brought up among just such types as he
describes with so rare a humour in the Judge, the Assessor, the Notary,
and the Apparitor. The young Mickiewicz was sent to the University of
Wilno(3) (1815-19), where he received a good classical education, and,
largely through his own independent reading, became well acquainted with
French, German, and Russian--even with English literature. On leaving the
university he obtained a position as teacher in the gymnasium at Kowno
(1819-23). Though even as a boy he had written verses, his real literary
career began with the publication in 1822 of a volume of ballads, which
was followed the next year by a second book of poems, containing fragments
of a fantastic drama, _The Forefathers_, and a short historical poem,
_Grazyna_. These volumes reflect the romantic movement then prevalent in
Europe, of which they are the first powerful expression in Poland. They
were in large part inspired by the poet's love for a young woman of
somewhat higher station than his own, who, though she returned his
affection, was forced by her family to marry another suitor.

In 1833 Mickiewicz was arrested as a political criminal, his offence being
membership in a students' club at the University of Wilno that had
cherished nationalistic aspirations. With several others, he was banished
from his beloved Lithuanian home to the interior of Russia; the following
years, until 1829, he spent in St. Petersburg, Odessa, and Moscow. During
this honourable exile he became intimate with many of