scribe not only a considerable number of short
pieces of verse--those first flutterings of the bird before it has
strength to leave the nest--but even the conception of many poetical
projects which time and study were hereafter to mature into
masterpieces. The short and fugitive essays in poetry to which we have
just alluded, appeared in a literary journal at various periods, and
under anonymous signatures--a circumstance to be deplored, as it has
deprived us of the means of examining how far these slight attempts,
composed in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years of his age,
gave promise of future excellence. In themselves, they were probably so
crude and _unlicked_ as to justify the poet in the indifference which
prevented him from claiming these early compositions, and allowing them
to be incorporated in the collections of his writings. During his
residence at the Lyceum, however, he undoubtedly meditated the plan of
his charming romantic poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila," and probably even
composed the opening of the work. To this period, too, are to be
assigned some stanzas of great merit, entitled "Recollections of
Tsarskoe Selo," and an "Epistle to Licinius"--both works exhibiting
considerable skill and mastery in versification, but by far too much
tinged (as might indeed be expected) with the light reflected from the
youthful poet's reading to deserve a place among his original
productions. For the amusement of his comrades, also, he wrote a number
of ludicrous and humorous pieces, which derived their chief merit from
the circumstances which suggested them; and were calculated rather to
excite a moment's laughter in the merry circle of schoolfellows, than to
be cited as specimens of the author's comic powers, particularly when we
reflect, that the broadly humorous was never Pushkin's favourite or even
successful manner of writing: in the delicate, subdued, Cervantes tone
of humour, however, he was destined to become perhaps the most
distinguished writer of his country--but let us not anticipate. One
production, connected with the Lyceum, is, however, too important (not
perhaps in itself, so much as in the circumstances accompanying it) to
be passed over in a biography of our poet. This is a didactic poem
entitled "Infidelity," which Pushkin composed and read at the public
examination at the Lyceum, at the solemn _Act_, (a ceremony resembling
that which bears the same name at Oxford and Cambridge, and which takes