performed the most serious portion of the drudgery
of collecting materials for his principal historical enterprise, he
drew, with a wonderfully rapid and lively pencil, the vigorous sketch of
the events of that extraordinary conspiracy, and has left us a work
which, whatever be its imperfections and slightness, viewed as a work of
history, cannot be denied to be a most admirable and striking outline of
the picturesque and singular events which form its subject. Convinced of
the importance, to an author of history, of a personal knowledge of the
scenes in which his events took place, Pushkin, when the history of
Pugatcheff's rebellion was already on the verge of completion,
determined (before his work was published) to examine with his own eyes
that eastern region of European Russia, which had been the theatre of
the strange drama of that singular pretender's life, and to enable
himself to infuse into a narration founded upon dry records, the life
and reality which was to be obtained from questioning the old
inhabitants of that country, many of whom might remember the wild
adventures of which, in their youth, they had been witnesses or actors.
In 1833, Pushkin was enabled to gratify this natural curiosity; and the
result of his visit to the scene of the rebellion enabled him to
communicate to his already plain, vigorous, and concise narration, a
tone of reality, a warmth of colouring, and a liveliness of language,
which renders it impossible to leave the book unfinished when once
opened, and which no elaborateness of research, and no minuteness of
detail, could otherwise have communicated.

During the first two years of its existence, the periodical entitled
"The Reading Library" was honoured by the appearance in its pages of
that division of Pushkin's smaller poems, afterwards published
separately as the fourth volume of his collected works, in the year
1835. In this journal, too, were printed his two prose tales "The Queen
of Spades" and "Kirdjali," the former of which has, we believe, appeared
in English, and of the latter a translation has been attempted, together
with several others of his smaller prose works, by the author of the
present notice. A journey which he made to Orenburg gave him the
materials for fresh prose tales. The most remarkable of these, the
beautiful and well-known story, "The Captain's Daughter," first appeared
in the periodical entitled "The Contemporary," which is justly
considered as the chie