In the work of Shevtchenko it is possible to follow the curious transformation from what may be called the collective-folk creative power, to the purely individual. His figures, subjects, and the quiet, heart-rending sadness of his poems are precisely the same as those to be met with in any Little Russian folk-ballad. The majority of his poems are not inventions, but are taken directly from popular legends and traditions, and the personality of the poet vanishes in a flood of purely popular poetry. Nevertheless, he is not a slavish copyist of this folk-poetry. The language of his compositions is strikingly simple, and comprehensible not only to native-born Little Russians, but also to those who are not acquainted with the dialect of that region. Most writers who have employed the Little Russian dialect are difficult of comprehension not only to educated Great Russians, but also 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.