h, and
imitated from writers of that nation. When his father retired from the
military service, he settled in Moscow, and the boy knew all the
literary men of that day and town before he was twelve years of age, and
there can be no doubt that this literary atmosphere had a great
influence upon him. When, at the age of twelve, he was placed in the
newly founded Lyceum,[10] at Tzarskoe Selo (sixteen miles from St.
Petersburg), whence so many famous men were afterwards graduated, he and
the other pupils amused themselves in their play hours by writing a
little newspaper, and by other literary pursuits. Here the lad was
compelled to learn Russian, and the first use he made of it was to write
caustic epigrams. At the school examination in 1815, the aged poet
Derzhavin was among the visitors; and when he heard the boy read his
"Memories of Tzarskoe Selo," he at once predicted his coming greatness.
As is natural at his age, there was not much originality of idea in the
poem; but it was amazing for its facility and mastery of poetic forms.
Karamzin and Zhukovsky were not long in adding their testimony to the
lad's genius, and the latter even acquired the habit of submitting his
own poems to the young poet's judgment.

Pushkin was an omnivorous reader, but his parents had never been pleased
with his progress in his studies, or regarded him as clever. The praise
of competent judges now opened their eyes; but he had a good deal to
endure from his father, later on, in spite of this. At this period,
Pushkin imitated the most varied poetical forms with wonderful delicacy,
and yielded to the most diverse poetical moods. But even then he was
entering on a new path, whose influence on later Russian literature was
destined to be incalculably great. While still a school-boy, he began to
write his famous fantastic-romantic poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila" (which
Glinka afterwards made the subject of a charming opera), and here, for
the first time in Russian literary history, a thoroughly national theme
was handled with a freedom and naturalness which dealt the death-blow to
the prevailing inflated, rhetorical style. The subject of the poem was
one of the folk-legends, of which he had been fond as a child; and when
it was published, in 1820, the critics were dumb with amazement. The
gay, even dissipated, society life which he took up on leaving the
Lyceum came to a temporary end in consequence of some biting epigrams
which he wrote. The Prefect