Nóvikov’s early education was received at the Gymnasium connected with the Moscow University; he was excluded from it in 1760 for laziness and insufficient progress. He soon drifted into literature, and directed his attention to the dissemination of useful knowledge among the people. He developed a prodigious activity from 1772 to 1778, publishing a large number of chronicles and documents dealing with Russian antiquity. In 1779 he rented the University press for ten years, published in three years more books than had been issued by that institution in the preceding twenty-four years of its existence, opened bookstores all over Russia and encouraged and protected a whole generation of young writers. He was a zealous Mason, and in that capacity practised a most generous philanthropy by using the very great income from his venture for the establishment of charities and schools. Catherine was never favourable to the Masons and other mystics who had got a firm foothold in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and when the French Revolution had broken out, she suspected such men as Radíshchev (see p. 361) and Nóvikov of belonging to a secret society whose object was the overturning of the existing order of things. At first she ordered the metropolitan Platón to examine into the soundness of Nóvikov’s religious views, but the enlightened prelate reported: “I implore the all-merciful God that not only in the flock which has been entrusted by God and you to me, but in the whole world there should be such good Christians as Nóvikov.” Nevertheless, Catherine later found an excuse for seizing Nóvikov and imprisoning him in the fortress of Schlüsselburg, from which he was released by Emperor Paul, who is said with tears in his eyes and upon his knees to have begged Nóvikov’s forgiveness for his mother’s cruelty to him. He passed the rest of his days in his estate of Tikhvín. FROM “ALL KINDS OF THINGS”