Derzhávin was born near Kazán, deriving his descent from a Tartar Murza, and passed his childhood in the east, in the Government of Orenbúrg. His early education was very scanty. In his fourteenth year his mother hastened with him to Moscow to enter him for future service as the son of a nobleman; but, her means being exhausted, she returned with him to Kazán, where she placed him in the newly opened Gymnasium. Even here the lack of good teachers precluded his getting any thorough instruction; his only positive gain was a smattering of German, which was to help him later in acquainting himself with the productions of the German Muse. In 1762 he entered the regiment of the Transfiguration (Preobrazhénski) as a common soldier. Whatever time he could call his own in the crowded and dingy barracks in which he passed eight years of his life he devoted to reading and to imitations of Russian and German verse. In 1772 he was made a commissioned officer, and was employed to quell the Pugachév rebellion. It was only in 1779 that Derzhávin began to write in a more independent strain; one of the best odes of this new period is his _Monody on the Death of Prince Meshchérski_. But the one that gave him his greatest reputation was his _Felítsa_, with which began a new epoch in Russian poetry. Lomonósov, Sumarókov, Tredyakóvski, and a number of minor poets had flooded Russian literature with lifeless odes in the French pseudo-classic style, written for all possible occasions, and generally to order. Just as a reaction was setting in against them in the minds of the best people, Derzhávin proved by his _Felítsa_ that an ode could possess other characteristics than those sanctioned by the French school. In 1782 he occupied a position in the Senate under the Procurator-General Vyázemski. He had an exalted opinion of Catherine, whom he had not yet met, and he spoke with full sincerity of her in his ode. The name _Felítsa_ was suggested to him by the princess in her moral fable (see p. 276 _et seq._). The chief interest in the ode for contemporary society lay in the bold attacks that Derzhávin made on the foibles of the dignitaries. Its literary value consists in the fact that it was the first attempt at a purely colloquial tone of playful banter, in a kind of poetic composition formerly characterised by a stilted language, replete with Church-Slavic words and biblical allusions. Numerous are the references made by the poets of the day to the Singer of _Felítsa_ (see p. 358 _et seq._); they all felt that Derzhávin had inaugurated a new era, that the period which had begun with Lomonósov’s _Capture of Khotín_ was virtually over.