Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/142

116 a combination of tiger and ape. From Alexander, Šiškov secured political preferment owing to the publication in 1811 of his work Considerations upon Love of Country, and he took the place of Speranskii. In 1824 he was appointed minister for education, being guided in this position by the principle that knowledge "in default of faith and simplemindedness" (Šiškov was a defender of serfdom) was injurious to the nation. Universal education would do more harm than good, and the immoderate diffusion of scientific culture was likewise deleterious. Even Filaret's catechism fell under the ban of Šiškov's censorship because the quotations from Holy Writ were in the Russian vernacular instead of church Slavonic.

Numerous writers vied with Šiškov in the idealisation of Old Russia. Karamzin, generally recognised as the chief of Russian historians, voiced the praises of oldtime tsarism and aristocracy. Deržavin, Zagoskin, Marlinskii, Polevoi in his later phase, together with the previously enumerated adversaries of Gallomania—all glorified Russia as contrasted with the west. The discovery in the year 1800 of the twelfth-century saga, The Lay of Igor's Raid, strengthened this tendency in poesy and imaginative literature. No long time elapsed before Russian national sentiment waxed so intense that Polevoi was able to Russify Turgot's phrase "patriotisme d'antichambre," and to speak of kvaspatriotiozm.

The west contributed in no small degree to this intensification of Russism. To Europe, Russia seemed interesting and new, and speedily secured admirers. Peter, the first tsar not merely to visit Europe but to make a cult of European ideas and institutions, became an object of wonder and admiration. Catherine, as already stated, was even more greatly admired, notably by Voltaire and Herder. Klopstock sang the praises of Alexander I, who was regarded by Madame de Staël as the "miracle of Providence," and many joined with these writers in acclaiming the saviour of France and Europe. Not merely was Russia interesting to Europeans, but, by a not unnatural illusion, she loomed with a false grandeur in the minds of the civilised and hypercivilised inhabitants of Europe, whose Rousseauism led them to imagine that in uncivilised Russia they had discovered the simple natural conditions for which they yearned.