Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/206

178 ungrateful, if I did not confess that in books I found my greatest resource and comfort, during the time of my captivity.

At length, after a few months, the use of pens, ink, and paper, was allowed to me. Though I had made it a rule to confine myself strictly to translations, still my heart, overflowing with so many dismal associations, arising from my own situation, and still more from that of my unhappy country, I wrote three Elegies; the first on the battle of Maciejowice; the second, on my journey to St Petersburg; and the third, on our prison and the disasters of Poland. I took for my motto this verse of Ovid:

These three Elegies contained nothing offensive to our tyrants, and were written with my left hand, for the right one withered perceptibly, and I had no strength in its fingers. If I had indulged my own private feelings, I would have written very strong things, but the consequences which I knew would have followed this, and the experience acquired