gn Office to the Chancery of General
Inzov in the South of Russia; and from 1820 to 1826 he lived first at
Kishinev, then at Odessa, and finally in his own home at Pskov. This
enforced banishment was of the greatest possible service to the poet;
it took him away from the whirl and distractions of St. Petersburg; it
prevented him from being compromised in the drama of the Decembrists;
it ripened and matured his poetical genius; it provided him, since it
was now that he visited the Caucasus and the Crimea for the first
time, with new subject-matter.

During this period he learnt Italian and English, and came under the
influence of Andre Chenier and Byron. Andre Chenier's influence is
strongly felt in a series of lyrics in imitation of the classics; but
these lyrics were altogether different from the anacreontics of his
boyhood. Byron's influence is first manifested in a long poem _The
Prisoner of the Caucasus_. It is Byronic in the temperament of the
hero, who talks in the strain of the earlier Childe Harold; he is
young, but feels old; tired of life, he seeks for consolation in the
loneliness of nature in the Caucasus. He is taken prisoner by mountain
tribesmen, and set free by a girl who drowns herself on account of her
unrequited love. Pushkin said later that the poem was immature, but
that there were verses in it that came from his heart. There is one
element in the poem which is by no means immature, and that is the
picture of the Caucasus, which is executed with much reality and
simplicity. Pushkin annexed the Caucasus to Russian poetry. The Crimea
inspired him with another tale, also Byronic in some respects, _The
Fountain of Baghchi-Sarai_, which tells of a Tartar Khan and his
Christian slave, who is murdered out of jealousy by a former
favourite, herself drowned by the orders of the Khan. Here again the
descriptions are amazing, and Pushkin draws out a new stop of rich and
voluptuous music.

In speaking of the influence of Byron over Pushkin it is necessary to
discriminate. Byron helped Pushkin to discover himself; Byron
revealed to him his own powers, showed him the way out of the French
garden where he had been dwelling, and acted as a guide to fresh woods
and pastures new. But what Pushkin took from the new provinces to
which the example of Byron led him was entirely different from what
Byron sought there. Again, the methods and workmanship of the two
poets were radically different. Pushkin is never imitativ