Chancellor returned the following year to Moscow, and arranged with the
Tsar the commercial privileges and immunities of a new company of
merchant-adventurers who desired to trade with Muscovy; but in 1556, while
on his way home, accompanied by Osep Neped, the first Russian ambassador
to the court of England, their ship was wrecked on our own coast, at
Pitsligo bay, where Chancellor was drowned, with most of the crew; but
Osep Neped, who escaped, was conducted with much pomp to London, and there
established on a firmer basis the commercial relations between the two
countries, to which Chancellor's discovery had led, and of which he had
laid the foundation. The commerce thus begun has continued uninterrupted,
to the mutual advantage of both nations, up to this time, and thousands of
our countrymen have there gained wealth and distinction, in commerce, in
the arts, in science, and in arms.
But of the twenty-seven millions of men, women, and children who people
Great Britain and Ireland, how many may be presumed to know any thing of
Russian literature, or even to have enquired whether it contains any thing
worth knowing? Are there a dozen literary men or women amongst us who
could read a Russian romance, or understand a Russian drama? Dr Bowring
was regarded as a prodigy of polyglot learning, because he gave us some
very imperfect versions of Russian ballads; and we were thankful even for
that contribution, from which, we doubt not, many worthy and well-informed
people learned for the first time that Russia produced poets as well as
potashes. Russia has lately lost a poet of true genius, of whom his
countrymen are proud, and no doubt have a right to be proud, for his
poetry found its way at once to the heart of the nation: but how few there
are amongst us who know any thing of Poushkin, unless it be his untimely
and melancholy end?
The generation that has been so prolific of prose fiction in other parts
of Europe, has not been barren in Russia. She boasts of men to whom she is
grateful for having adorned her young literature with the creations of
their genius, or who have made her history attractive with the allurements
of faithful fiction, giving life, and flesh, and blood to its dry bones;
and yet, gentle reader, learned or fair--or both fair and learned--whether
sombre in small clothes, or brilliant in _bas-bleus_--how many could
you have named a year ago of those names which are the pride and delight
of a great European nation, with which we have had an intimate, friendly,
and beneficial intercourse for three consecutive centuries, and whose
capital has now for some years been easily accessible in ten days from our
own?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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