This was a most youthful production of Púshkin, but its effect in Russia was tremendous. Classicism, _i. e_. the pseudo-classicism which reigned then, was defeated for ever. Everyone wanted to have the poem, everyone retained in memory whole passages and even pages from it, and with this tale the modern Russian literature--simple, realistic in its descriptions, modest in its images and fable, earnest and slightly humouristic--was created. In fact, one could not imagine a greater simplicity in verse than that which Púshkin had already obtained in this poem. But to give an idea of this simplicity to English readers remains absolutely impossible so long as the poem is not translated by some very gifted English poet. Suffice it to say that, while its verses are wonderfully musical, it contains not one single passage in which the author has resorted to unusual or obsolete words--to any words, indeed, but those which everyone uses in common conversation. Thunders came upon Púshkin from the classical camp when this poem made its appearance. We have only to think of the Daphnes and the Chloes with which poetry used to be embellished at that time, and the sacerdotal attitude which the poet took towards his readers, to understand how the classical school was offended at the appearance of a poet who expressed his thoughts in beautiful images, without resorting to any of these embellishments, who spoke the language which everyone speaks, and related adventures fit for the nursery. With one cut of his sword Púshkin had freed literature from the ties which were keeping it enslaved. The tales which he had heard from his old nurse gave him the matter, not only for _Ruslán and Ludmíla_, but also for a series of popular tales, of which the verses are so natural that as soon as you have pronounced one word that word calls up immediately the next, and this the following, because you cannot say the thing otherwise than in the way in which Púshkin has told it. “Is it not exactly so that tales should be told?” was asked all over Russia; and, the reply being in the affirmative, the fight against pseudo-classicism was won forever.