His ancestors were nobles who occupied important posts under Peter the Great. His mother was a granddaughter of Hannibal, the negro of whom Pushkin wrote under the title of "Peter the Great's Arab." This Hannibal was a slave who had been brought from Africa to Constantinople, where the Russian ambassador purchased him, and sent him to Peter the Great. The latter took a great fancy to him, had him baptized, and would not allow his brothers to ransom him, but sent him, at the age of eighteen, abroad to be educated. On his return, Peter kept his favorite always beside him. Under the reign of the Empress Anna Ioannovna he was exiled to Siberia, in company with other court favorites of former reigns; and like them, returned to Russia, and was loaded with favors by Peter's daughter, the Empress Elizabeth. His son was a distinguished general of Katherine II.'s day. Pushkin, the poet, had blue eyes, and very fair skin and hair, but the whole cast of his countenance in his portraits is negro. His father was a typical society man, and in accordance with the fashion of the day, Pushkin was educated exclusively by French tutors at home, and his first writings (at the age of ten) were in French, 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.