Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/329

Rh were all powerful in all departments of life, but the wars with Frederick the Great brought on a reaction, and with Catherine II (1762-1796) a long line of Russian court-favorites begins. From that time Gallomania becomes rampant. The restless "Semiramis of the North" established numerous commissions for effecting radical reforms both governmental and social. She coquetted with the Uberal ideas of the Encyclopedists, and carried on a voluminous correspondence with Voltaire and Diderot. No sooner had the liberal seeds begun to sprout than the Empress became reactionary in the extreme, eradicat- ing "plots "and " revolution " with a hand that knew no mercy. But during the few liberal years of her reign Russian life pul- sated with great intensity.

The Empress herself wrote more than a score of comedies, dramatic sketches, and operatic librettos, all fully national in subject and genuinely popular in language and treatment, quite a contrast to the artificial pseudo-classicism prevalent for nearly half a century. Under Alexander I (1801-1825) Russia experienced a process of liberal reforms during the first half of the reign, and rabid reaction in the latter half. During their march upon Paris and their sojourn there, in the course of the Napoleonic Wars, the Russians had absorbed too many liberal ideas to suit the victorious Emperor, and the Holy Alliance was the result. Thenceforth Russia be- came part and parcel of Europe in her politics and in her Literature. Nicholas I (1825-1855) still further curtailed the hberties of his subjects, but police tyranny and the censorship reached their highest point after the days of 1848. The last seven years of his reign were the "Darkest Age" of Russian Literature. The liberal beginnings of Alexander II (1855- 1881) brought "the Sixties," the culminating point in Russian Literature, followed by the great movement of "going to the people" in the Seventies. Reaction of a severity almost equaling the period of 1848-1855 set in with Alexander III (1881-1894). The rule of Nicholas II, characterized by Hague