al dictator of Europe. Under his
direction and encouragement the treasures of oriental literature were
being translated and made known to the West. This is merely a hasty
glimpse of the "mise-en-scene" that preceded the debut in life of the
most renowned of Polish poets. The old traditions of absolute and
God-created monarchs and princely times were coming to an end, and that
democratic modern world, where everything was to change, was close at
hand, just over the crest, indeed, of this new century into which Fate
was ushering him. He was to see the last of blind power and royal
prerogative, and the first dawn of a modern spirit which in time would
sweep away forever, the old. It was an uncertain, difficult transition
period, without standards and without measurements.

As we take a fleeting, bird's-eye view of the stirring times in which
his days were spent, his travels, his army life, his periods of
professorship, we can not help but wonder at the amount of writing
Mickiewicz did. And his life was not a long one; it did not reach to
sixty years. But during the working years allotted him, before a
mystical melancholy--which was threatening to degenerate into
madness--had impaired his faculties, his mind was unusually brilliant,
creative and marvelously disciplined. It obeyed at will. At one time he
was professor of Latin in Lausanne; at another time he held the chair of
Slavic languages in Paris. He taught Polish and Latin in Kovno. He
traveled extensively in Italy in the interest of the Polish revolution.
His mind was many-sided and capable of various activities. He devoted
considerable time to advanced mathematics and philosophy. He made
scientific investigations in Vilna under Lalewel. At one time and
another he lived in various large cities of Europe. In Germany he met
and became friendly with Goethe. In Switzerland he met Krasinski. In
1833 he married Celina Szymanovska. Her mother was the famous Slav
beauty and musician who had so delighted Goethe in her youth.

Among writers of Russia and Poland whose life period somewhat coincided
with that of Mickiewicz's are: Korzenowski (born in 1797), the novelist
(a brother of Adam Mickiewicz was fellow-teacher with Korzenowski at
Charkov); Danilewski (1829), likewise a novelist--it was he who
translated The Crimean Sonnets into Russian; Malzweski, Polish patriot
and poet, whose "Maria"--perhaps the most popular poetic story in
Poland--appeared at almost the same time as