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of the region, and directed them to seek for his father’s
body on the island seen in his dreams, whose situation
he exactly described; and, since the body was found,
was for the rest of his life obstinately convinced that
it was found exactly on the spot shown to him in his
dream.
Finally Lomonósof is Russian in his rambling propensity,
and his thirst for foreign knowledge; very Russian
in his adoration of the Tsaritsa; Russian in his
coarseness and violence towards his foreign colleagues; but
Russian especially in the way in which, a pupil of the
Germans, he goes to the end of his rope in his hatred
of and opposition to the intellectual sway of the
foreigner.
From Lomonósof it is a direct descent through Derzhavin
and Zhukovski down to Pushkin and Lermontof,
the literary geniuses of this century.
Derzhavin (1743-1816) represents in lyrics the period
of Catherine II., as Lomonósof does that of Elizabeth.
He was born at Kazán, learned German early, read
Gellert and Hagedorn, Herder and Klopstock, was
compelled to pass twelve hard years from 1762 as a soldier of
the guard. The day when Catherine ascended the throne,
he stood as a soldier of nineteen on guard at the Winter
Palace. No one could then have imagined that in the
future his name would be mentioned in connection with
hers.
In 1773 he took part in the campaign against Pugatchef
on the Volga, which he afterwards tried to describe
in verse. In 1777 he published his first collection of
poems, which contained among others a translation of a
number of the poems of Frederick the Great. He obtained
a civil appointment by his well-known “Ode to
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