We read of the persecution of Palm and Potyekhin; of the years that Melshin, Korolenko, Zasodimsky, Elpatievsky, etc, spent in exile. By this time a terrible truth dawns upon the startled mind: In Romanoff's Russia, scarcely one single writer of worth has escaped imprisonment or banishment.[57] And these prophets who have been thus persecuted were not despicable rhymers like Alfred Austin, or duke-and-duchess novelists like Harold MacGrath. They were great-brained men whose mission was to uplift a nation. Had the Catherines, Nicholases, and Alexanders been less powerful, Russia would not now be the foulest blot on our skull-strewn earth.[58] Ivan Federof was the first of Russian printers. In 1564 he cast the Slavonic characters. Being accused of heresy, he fled for his life. The Lithuanian magnates with whom he sought refuge, forced him to till the soil. Unhappy Federof said, "It was not my work to sow the grain, but to scatter thru the earth food for the mind, nourishment for the souls of all mankind." He perished in Lemberg in extreme poverty.[59] Woful was his fate--symbolic of the sad destiny which was to befall every literary man in Knoutland.[60] Let the Russian who intends to become an author prepare his last will and testament, and notify the nearest undertaker. No night will be too dark to keep gendarmes from bursting into his room and hauling him off to a prison from which he may never emerge. (If he comes from an aristocratic family let him adopt an empty-eyed skull and yellow cross-bones as a suitable coat-of-arms). In the den of the bloody bear there is a blackness as of many clouds. Within this deep shadow, Virtue is slaughtered and Genius treated like an unwelcome cur. FOOTNOTES: [42] When Pushkin began to write, the Russian literary language was in a somewhat unsettled and nebulous state, and his poetry helped to form and fix it. He thus did for Russian literature what Chaucer did for English.