Page:The Kobzar of the Ukraine.pdf/120



Now-a-days we have many discussions and searchings of heart over the question of prisons and the purpose of punishment. I doubt if the autocracy suffered many qualms of conscience in such matters. It was simply an affair of silencing a dangerous voice and disciplining an unruly subject.

They were too humane to put him to death, they merely sought to crush his spirit. But the Slav spirit is hard to crush. It may brood and smoulder long, but sometime or other it will burst out in flames.

In the case of Shevchenko another influence may be seen at work. In his ragged youth, when acting as assistant to a drunken church singer he gained at least one thing. That was a familiarity with the Psalter and the Hebrew prophets. The deep religious fire of the Hebrew seems fused with his own irrepressible native genius to form a spirit that could not be subdued.

They tided to make a soldier of him but he could not or would not learn the tricks of the soldier's trade.