book is even now prohibited in Russia, and Shcherbátov, who preferred the rough old times to the flighty manners of the day,--that is, the writers who were at outs with existing conditions,--were the carriers of a new spirit which, though not characteristically Russian, was akin to it in that it devoted itself with ardour to the treatment of burning questions from a native standpoint. Two of these writers, Shcherbátov and Nóvikov, were Slavophiles in the best sense of the word. We shall now make the balance-sheet of the eighteenth-century literature in the separate departments, and see what residuum it bequeathed to the nineteenth century. In the scholastic style of the Middle Ages it became a settled practice to dedicate books to powerful persons, and to address them with eulogies on all solemn occasions. Polish influence had made this kind of poetry popular at Kíev, and Simeón Pólotski introduced it in Moscow in time to sing the glory of the new-born Peter. Lomonósov’s activity began with an ode, and Tredyakóvski, Sumarókov, Petróv and a host of minor poets, if that name can be applied to writers of soulless rhymed adulation, proceeded in the beaten track of “ecstatic” poetry, until Dmítriev gave it the death-blow by his _What Others Say_. The only positive value lay in the odes of Lomonósov in which he described phenomena of nature, and those of Derzhávin, who, following his example, made similar use of them as, for example, in his _Ode to the Deity_. His _Felítsa_, which marked the disintegration of the “ecstatic ode,” left its effect in the lighter epistolary poetry of his contemporaries, like Kostróv, and may even be traced in the playful productions of the next generation. The epic is akin to the ode, in that it is a kind of rapturous eulogy on some momentous event in history. In the mad intoxication with foreign pseudo-classic ideals there could be no place for a proper understanding of native history; hence the flatulent epics of Kheráskov, admired though they were, could be of no lasting merit. The other epics dealt with foreign subjects. Tredyakóvski’s _Telemachiad_ could only amuse as a piece of poetical ineptitude, and a pleasure-loving public of the times of Catherine II. was more inclined to go into raptures over Apuleius’s _Golden Ass_ which, having passed through a French transformation, appeared as a species of mock-heroic in Bogdanóvich’s _Psyche_. Púshkin still took delight in it, and his earlier productions of this kind have something of Bogdanóvich’s manner. Máykov’s _Eliséy_, which is really superior to the _Psyche_, was not so well received because he introduced too freely the popular element, for which at that time there could be no appreciation.