Besides this, I have written about thirty small pieces of poetry. I have not done yet; I have written in prose (this is a great secret) five tales," (Ivan Bielkin's Stories.) The year 1831 began afflictingly for Pushkin. On the 14th of January Baron Delvig died. All Pushkin's letters in which he makes any allusion to this loss, breathe a sentiment of the most deep and permanent sorrow. The following is extracted from a letter to a friend, dated the 31st of this month:--"I knew him (Delvig) at the Lyceum. I watched the first unnoted unfolding of his poetic mind--the early development of a talent which we then gave not its just value. We read together Deljavin and Jukovskii; we talked of all _that swelleth the spirit, that melteth the heart_. His life was rich and full--rich, not in romantic adventures, but in the most noble feelings, the most brilliant and the purest intellect, and the fairest hopes." But the grief caused by this great and irreparable loss--a grief which threw its dark cold shadow over the whole of Pushkin's subsequent existence--was not unrelieved by feelings of a brighter tone: the void caused by friendship was filled up with love. In February of this year he was married, at Moscow, to the lady to whom (as we have mentioned above) he had been some time engaged. Mlle. Gontchareff was of an ancient Russian family, and a person of singular beauty. "I am married," (writes the poet to one of his friends, in a letter dated February 24.) "I have now but one desire in the world, and that is, that nothing in my present life be changed. This existence is so new to me, that I feel as if I had been born again. The death of Delvig is the only shadow in my bright existence." Pushkin was desirous of editing a volume of the "Northern Flowers," in the following year, for the benefit of the family of his departed friend, for which he now began assiduously to collect materials. This labour detained him until the month of May in Moscow; and, before his migration to St Petersburg, the tragedy of Boris Godunoff was printed. Among all the works of Pushkin there is not one which exhibits so high a degree of artistic skill, or so vigorous and powerful a genius, as this drama, in which every word, every dialogue, seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation, and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition, viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality, Russian history, and Russian character. The remainder of Pushkin's short, alas! but laborious life, however filled with the silent activity of intellectual occupation, offers but few materials for the biographer: it was passed principally at St Petersburg, varied by occasional journeys to Moscow, and the usual _autumnal_ retirements, which we have mentioned as having been so favourable for the execution of the poet's literary tasks.