Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/123

Rh LITERATURE,] RUSSIA 105 Sigismund Augustus. From his retreat he commenced a correspondence with Ivan, in which he reproached him for his many cruelties. Ivan in his answer declared that he was quite justified in taking the lives of his slaves, if he thought it right to do so. While living in Lithuania, Kurbski appeared as the defender of the Greek faith, which was being undermined by the Jesuits. He died in exile in 1583. Kurbski was a fluent writer, but Bestu- zheff Kiumin thinks that his hatred of Ivan led him to exaggerate, and he regrets that Karamzin should have followed him so closely. Besides the answers of Ivan to Kurbski, there is his letter to Cosmas, and the brother- hood of the Cyrillian monastery on the White Lake (Bielo Ozero), in which he reproaches them for the self-indulgent lives they are leading. Other works of the 16th century are the Stepennaya Kniga, or "Book of Degrees " (" or Pedi- grees"), in which historical events are grouped under the reigns of the grand-dukes, whose pedigrees are also given ; and the Life of the Czar Feodor Ivanovich (1584-1598), written by the patriarch Job. To the beginning of the 17th century belongs the Chronograph of Sergius Kubasoff of Tobolsk. His work extends from the creation of the world to the accession of Michael Romanoff, and contains interesting accounts of such of the members of the Russian royal family as Kubasoff had himself seen. Something of the same kind must have been the journal of Prince Mstislavski, which he showed the English ambassador Jerome Horsey, but which is now lost. 1 To the time of the first Romanoffs belongs the story of the siege of Azoff, a prose poem, which tells us, in an inflated style, how in 1637 a body of Cossacks trium- phantly repelled the attacks of the Turks. They had seized this town, which they were anxious to hand over to the czar Michael, but circumstances were not ripe for it. There is also an account of the siege of the Troitza monastery by the Poles during the "Smutnoye Vremya," or Period of Troubles, as it is called, that which deals with the adventures of the false Demetrius and the Polish invasion which followed. But all these are surpassed by the work on Russia of Gregory Karpoff Kotoshikhin. He served in the ambassador's office (posolski prikaz), and when called upon to give information against his col- leagues fled to Poland about 1664. Thence he passed into Sweden and wrote his account of Russia at the request of Count Delagardie, the chancellor of that country. He was executed about 1669 for slaying in a quarrel the master of the house in which he lived. The manuscript was found by Prof. Solovieff (not the eminent historian lately deceased) at Upsala and printed in 1840. A new edition has recently appeared, and Prof. Grote has col- lected some fresh facts about the author's life, but we have no space here for a minute examination of them. The picture which Kotoshikhin draws of his native country is a sad one: ignorance, cruelty, and superstition are seen everywhere rampant. His work is of great import- ance, since it is from his description, and the facts we gather from the Domostroi, that we can reconstruct the Old Russia of the time before Peter the Great, as in our days the valuable labours of M. Zabielin have done in his work on Russian domestic life. Perhaps, as an exile from his country, Kotoshikhin has allowed himself to write too bitterly. A curious work is the Uriadnik Sokol- nichia Puti (" Directions for Falconry"), which was written for the use of the emperor Alexis, who, like many Russians 1 Horsey says : " I read in their cronickells written and kept in secreat by a great priem prince of that country named Knez Ivan Fedorowich Mistisloskoie, who, owt of his love and favour, imparted unto me many secreats observed in the memory and procis of his tyrne, which was fowerscore years, of the state, natur, and government of that comonweelth." Bond, Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (Hakluyt Society), 1856. of old time, was much addicted to this pastime. The Serb, Yuri Krizhanich, who wrote in Russian, was the first Pan- Krizha- slavist, anticipating Kollar by one hundred and fifty years nich. or more. He wrote a critical Servian grammar (with comparison of the Russian, Polish, Croatian, and White Russian), which was edited from the manuscripts by Bodianski in 1848. For his time he had a very good insight into Slavonic philology. His Panslavism, how- ever, sometimes took a form by no means practical. He went so far as to maintain that a common Slavonic language might be made for all the peoples of that race, an impossible project which has been the dream of many enthusiasts. From some unexplained cause he was ban- ished to Siberia, and finished his grammar at Tobolsk. He also wrote a work on the Russian empire, which was edited by Beszonoff in 1860. In it he shows him- self a widely-read man, and with very extensive Western culture. The picture drawn, as in the corresponding production of Kotoshikhin, is a very gloomy one. The great remedy suggested by the Serb is education. To this period belongs the life of the patriarch Nikon by Shusherin. The struggles of Nikon with the czar, and his emendations of the sacred books, which led to a great schism in Russia, are well known. They have been made familiar to Englishmen by the eloquent pages of Dean Stanley. 2 At Moscow may be seen the portrait of this celebrated divine and his tomb ; his robes, which have been preserved, show him to have been a man of 7 feet in stature. The mistakes which had crept into the translation of the Scriptures, from the blunders of genera- tions of copyists, were frequently of a ludicrous character; still, a large number of the people preferred retaining them, and from this revision may be dated the rise of the Raskolniks (Dissenters) or Staro-obriadtzi (those who adhere to the old ritual). With the name of Simeon Polotzki. Polotzki (1628-1680) the old period of Russian literature may be closed. He was tutor to the czar Feodor, son of Alexis, and may be said in a way to have helped to introduce the culture of the West into Russia, as he was educated at Kieff, then a portion of Polish territory. Polotzki came to Moscow about 1664. He wrote religious works (Vienetz Vieri, "The Garland of Faith,") and composed poems and religious dramas (The Prodigal Son, Nebuchadnezzar, &c.). He has left us some droll verses on the czar's new palace of Kolomenskoe, which are very curious doggerel. The artificial lions that roared, moved their eyes, and walked especially delighted him. Alexis had probably ordered something to be constructed resem- bling the machinery we find mentioned in the Byzantine writers. There does not seem to be any ground for the assertion (often met with even in Russian writers) that Sophia, the sister of Peter the Great, was acquainted with French, and translated some of the plays of Moliere. And now all things were to be changed as if by an The enchanter's wand. Russia was to leave her martyrologies modern and historical stories and fragmentary chronicles, and to per: adopt the forms of literature in use in the West. One of the chief helpers of Peter the Great in the education of the people was Feofane (Theophanes) Procopovich, who advocated the cause of science, and attacked unsparingly the superstitions then prevalent ; the cause of conservatism was defended by Stephen Yavorski. The Rock of Faith of the latter was written. to refute the Lutherans and Calvinists. Another remarkable writer of the times of Petr the Great was Pososhkoff, who produced a valuable work on Poverty and Riches, a kind of treatise on political economy. Antiokh Kantemir (1708-1744), son of a former hospodar of Moldavia, wrote some clever satires still read ; they are imitated from Boileau. He also Lectures on the Eastern Church. XXI. 14