lso to ordinary
Little Russians, because their language is artificial, intermingled with
a mass of new words and expressions invented in educated circles of
Little Russia. But Shevtchenko wrote in the living tongue of the
Ukraina, in which its people talk and sing. His best work, after he came
under the influence of Zhukovsky, is "The Hired Woman." This is the
story of a girl who is betrayed, then forced by outsiders to abandon her
child, after which she hires herself out as servant to the people at
whose door she has left the child, and so is enabled to rear it, only
revealing the secret to her child on her deathbed.

The sufferings of the people in serfdom form the subject of another
series of his poems, and in this category, "Katerina" is the best worked
out and most dramatic of his productions. A third category comprises the
historical ballads, in which he celebrates the days of kazak freedom.
This class comprises two long poems, "The Haidamak" (The Kazak Warrior
of Ancient Ukraina) and "Gamaliya," besides a number of short
rhapsodies. In these poems the writer has expressed his political and
social views, and they are particularly prized by his fellow-landsmen of
the Ukraina. The fourth (or, in the order of their appearance, the
first) class of Shevtchenko's poems consists of ballads in the
folk-style, and sentimental, romantic pieces, which have no political or
social tendencies. Such are the ballads, "The Cause," "The Drowned
Woman," "The Water Nymph," "The Poplar Tree," which he wrote in St.
Petersburg on scraps of paper in the summer garden.

Of less talent and importance was a fellow-citizen of Koltzoff, Ivan
Savitch Nikitin (1824-1861). Perhaps the most interesting thing about
him is that Count L. N. Tolstoy took a lively interest in this gifted
plebeian, and offered to bear the cost of publishing his poems,
regarding him as a new Koltzoff. Count Tolstoy has since arrived at the
conclusion that all poetry is futile and an unnecessary waste of time,
as the same ideas can be much better expressed in prose, and with less
labor to both writer and reader.

The poet from the educated classes of society who deserves the most
attention as a member of Nekrasoff's camp, is Alexyei Nikolaevitch
Pleshtcheeff (1825-1893), the descendant of an ancient family of the
nobility. In 1849 he was arrested for suspected implication in what is
known as "The Petrashevsky Affair" (from the name of the leader), and
imprisoned in th