identity of the former. He wrote a sketch of Russian History, a long and tedious epic poem called the _Petreide_, speeches, odes, tragedies, and several works on chemistry and mineralogy. None of his productions are without merit; but he was more a man of sagacity and strong talent, than of poetical genius. His poems are all cold and artificial; excepting perhaps his version of a few chapters of the book of Job, where the beauties of the original appear to have inspired him. His speeches and odes are written in the same style of panegyric, which then reigned, and which reigns still, in all the creations of Russian poetry or prose having the least reference to the imperial family; and which, in connection with the boastful style of all productions purporting to describe national deeds, is a real blemish upon the Russian literature, fitted to render it disgusting to all foreigners.[23] The two most celebrated writers among Lomonosof's cotemporaries, though somewhat younger than he, were Alexander Sumarokof, ob. 1777, and Michael Kheraskof, born 1733, ob. 1807. Both were very productive writers in prose and poetry, overwhelming the reading public with tragedies and comedies, odes and epistles; and the latter also with two long epic poems, one in twelve, and the other in eighteen cantos! Both were highly admired, and the overflowings of their pens were devoured with avidity. Kheraskof was called the Russian Homer. The childhood, in which Russian literature then was, is not the age of criticism; sounder judges of later times have allotted to those productions a place hardly above mediocrity. The first Russian theatre was instituted in Jaroslav. A.D. 1746. The permission, which the actors obtained A.D. 1754, to establish themselves in St. Petersburg, and still more the foundation of a national stage in Moscow in 1759, served much to awaken the decided dramatic talent of the Russians; a faculty in which they are perhaps incomparable, and certainly are not surpassed by any other nation. Several gifted literary men employed themselves in writing for the stage. Such were J. Knjashnin, ob. 1791, an imitator of the French, but not without talent of his own; Von Wisin, ob. 1792, the author of two comedies, full of genuine comic power; Maïkof, Nicolef, Klushin, etc. The distinguished productions of Von Wisin alone have continued to hold possession of the stage.[24]