The Tsar Feodor_ (1868) and the _Tsar Boris_ (1869).

The Russian fabulists, whose name is legion, demand some mention;
Khemnitzer, Dmitriev, Ivanov and others, have attempted this style
of poetry; but the most celebrated of all is Ivan Krilov (1768-1844).
Many of his short sentences have become proverbs among the Russian
people, like the couplets of Lafontaine among the French, and Butler's
_Hudibras_ among ourselves. His pictures of life and manners are
most thoroughly national. In Koltzov the true voice of the people,
which had before only expressed itself in the national ballads was
heard. The life of this sensitive and warm-hearted man of genius
was clouded by poverty and suffering.

The poems of Koltzov are written, for the most part, in an unrhymed
verse; the sharp, well-defined accent in Russian amply satisfying
the ear, as in German. His poetical taste had been nurtured by
the popular lays of his country. He has caught their colouring
as truly as Burns did that of the Scottish minstrelsy. He is
unquestionably the most national poet that Russia has produced;
Slepoushkin and Alipanov, two other peasant poets, who made some
little noise in their time, cannot for one moment be compared with
him; but, on the other hand, he has been excelled by the fiery
energy and picturesque power of the Cossack, Taras Shevchenko, of
whom I shall speak. Since the death of Pushkin, Lermontov alone
has appeared to dispute the poetical crown with him. The short life
of this author (1814-41), ended in the same way as Pushkin's--in
a duel provoked by himself. Many of his lyrics are exquisite, and
have become standard poems in Russia, such as the _Gifts of Terek_
and _The Cradle Song of the Cossack Mother_.

In Gogol, who died in 1852, the Russians had to lament the loss
of a keen and vigorous satirist. With a happy humour reminding
us of Dickens in his best moods, he has sketched all classes of
society in the _Dead Souls_, perhaps the cleverest of all Russian
novels. No one, also has reproduced the scenery and habits of Little
Russia, of which he was a native, more vigorously than Gogol, whether
in the pictures of country life in his _Old-Fashioned Household_
(if we may translate in so free a manner the title _Starovetskie
Pomestchiki_), or in the wilder sketches of the struggles which
took place between the Poles and Cossacks in _Taras Boulba_. In the
_Portrait_ and _Memoirs of a Madman_, Gogol shows a weird power,
which may be com