Yet, Russian literature owes much to Catherine, who, at least in the first part of her enlightened absolutism, encouraged a healthy development of Letters, often through her own example. Her own writings familiarised her people with the best thought of Europe, and as before her Racine and Boileau, so now Voltaire, Beccaria, Montesquieu, were upon the lips of all. Literature had begun in imitations of foreign models, and hardly a trace of anything original is to be found in the eighteenth century; but even a superficial Voltairism was preferable to the more distant pseudo-classicism of the preceding reigns, for, though most of its humanitarianism was spurious and its culture skin-deep, it led a few more gifted individuals to a clearer perception of actualities, to a fuller interest in that which was immediate and around them, and, in the end, to true culture. The most promising influence on Russian literature was the one which Addison and the English satirical journals began to exert on Catherine and on nearly all the writers of the day. The _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, and the _Tatler_ had found a host of imitators in continental Europe, and satirical journals sprang up in astonishing abundance. It is not likely that Catherine became acquainted with the English originals. Her knowledge came rather through German and French translations; and the many passages from these English journals that found their way into Russia after the fifties were likewise generally derived at second hand. In any case, Addison and the satirical journals took deep root in Russian soil, and a long series of similar productions, from 1769 to 1774, had a very salutary effect on the drama and on those writings in which contemporary manners are held up to the scorn and ridicule of the people. Catherine herself, the founder of the first of these journals, had only the intention of practising this kind of literature for purposes of good-natured banter, and she was rather shocked when she discovered that her example had given Nóvikov and his adherents a weapon for attacking all the negative sides of contemporary civilisation. Without having wished it, Catherine gave into the hands of the disaffected a means of concentrating themselves around a name, a standard,--and public opinion became a factor in literature.