common people, the
peasantry, remained entirely neglected.

It was however in a family of the lowest standing, that Michael
Lomonosof was born, A.D. 1711. His father was a fisherman in the
government of Archangel. During the long winters, when his father's
trade was interrupted, Lomonosof learned to read of one of the church
servants. The beauties of the Bible, and the singing of the Psalms
during the church service, in the rhymed translation of Simeon of
Polotzk, first awakened his own poetical faculties. An ardent desire
for an education caused him to leave home privately and seek his way
to Moscow, where, he was told, was an institution, in which foreign
languages were taught. Circumstances proved fortunate; he found
liberal patrons; was educated afterwards in Kief and St. Petersburg,
and obtained means to go to Germany. Here he connected philosophy with
the mathematical studies which he had hitherto chiefly pursued;
devoted a part of his time to the science of mining, at the
celebrated school in Freiburg; and sat in Marburg at the feet of the
philosopher Wolf. In passing through Brunswick, he escaped with
difficulty the horrors of the Prussian military system. He succeeded
in reaching Holland, and thence returned to his own country; where he
was well received and honourably employed by the government. He died
A.D. 1765, in the enjoyment of high general esteem, but not that
degree of reputation which has been allotted to him by a more
judicious posterity. He first ventured to draw a distinct boundary
line between the Old Slavic and the Russian languages; which hitherto
had been confounded in a most intolerable manner. In his Russian
Grammar, he first laid down principles and fixed rules for the general
compass of the language; without however checking the influence of the
Church Slavonic more than was necessary, in order to preserve the
identity of the former. He wrote a sketch of Russian History, a long
and tedious epic poem called the _Petreide_, speeches, odes,
tragedies, and several works on chemistry and mineralogy. None of his
productions are without merit; but he was more a man of sagacity and
strong talent, than of poetical genius. His poems are all cold and
artificial; excepting perhaps his version of a few chapters of the
book of Job, where the beauties of the original appear to have
inspired him. His speeches and odes are written in the same style of
panegyric, which then reigned, and which reigns still,