Page:Russian Novelists (1887).djvu/43

Rh history, and as a memorial of the illustrious Catherine. Pushkin says of him: —

"He is far inferior to Lomonosof. — He neither understood the grammar nor the spirit of our language ; and in time, when his works will have been translated, we shall blush for him. We should reserve only a few of his odes and sketches, and burn all the rest."

Krylof, the writer of fables in imitation of La Fontaine, deserves mention. He had talent enough to show some originality in a style of literature in which it is most difficult to be original ; and wrote with a rude simplicity characteristically Russian, and in a vein much more vigorous than that of his model.

Karamzin inaugurated a somewhat novel deviation in the way of imitation. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Rousseau. He was poet, critic, political economist, novelist, and historian; and bore a leading part in the literature of the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth; a time including the end of Catherine's reign and the early part of Alexander's. It was a transition period between the classic and romantic schools of literature. Karamzin might be called the Rousseau and the Chateaubriand of his country. His voluminous history of Russia is of great merit, although he is sufficiently blinded by his patriotism to cause him to present a too flattering picture of a most