Count A. K. Tolstoy, who enjoyed all the advantages of education and travel abroad (where he made acquaintance with Goethe), began to scribble verses at the age of six, he says in his autobiography. Born in 1817, he became Master of the Hounds at the imperial court in 1857, and died in 1875. He made his literary debut in 1842 with prose tales, and only in 1855 did he publish his lyric and epic verses in various newspapers. His best poetical efforts, beautiful as they are in external form, are characterless, and remind one of Zhukovsky's, in that they were influenced by foreign or Russian poets--Lermontoff, for instance. But they have not a trace of genuine, unaffected feeling, of vivid, burning passion, of inspiration. His best work is his prose historical romance, "Prince Serebryany," which gives a lively and faithful picture of Ivan the Terrible, his court, and life in his day. The dramas already mentioned are almost if not equally famous in Russia, though less known abroad. "Prince Serebryany," and "War and Peace" by the former author's more illustrious cousin, Count L. N. Tolstoy, are the best historical novels in the Russian language. Another poet of this period was Apollon Nikolaevitch Maikoff, born in 1821, the son of a well-known painter. During his first period he gave himself up to classical, bloodless poems, of which one of the most noted is "Two Worlds," which depicts the clash of heathendom and Christianity at the epoch of the fall of Rome. This poem he continued to write all his life; the prologue, "Three Deaths," begun in 1841, was not finished until 1872. To this period, also, belong "Two Judgments," "Sketches of Rome," "Anacreon," "Alcibiades," and so forth. His second and best period began in 1855, when he abandoned his cold classicism and wrote his best works: "Clermont Cathedral," "Savonarola," "Foolish Dunya," "The Last Heathens," "Polya," "The Little Picture," and a number of beautiful translations from Heine.