How many thousands of young Russian women have later on repeated these same verses, and said to themselves: “I would gladly give up all these rags and all this masquerade of luxurious life for a small shelf of books, for life in the country, amidst the peasants, and for the grave of my old nurse in our village.” How many have done it! And we shall see how this same type of Russian girl was developed still further in the novels of Turguéneff--and in Russian life. Was not Púshkin a great poet to have foreseen and predicted it? LÉRMONTOFF It is said that when Turguéneff and his great friend, Kavélin, came together--Kavélin was a very sympathetic philosopher and a writer upon law--a favourite theme of their discussions was: “Púshkin or Lérmontoff?” Turguéneff, as is known, considered Púshkin one of the greatest poets, and especially one of the greatest artists, among men; while Kavélin must have insisted upon the fact that in his best productions Lérmontoff was but slightly inferior to Púshkin as an artist, that his verses were real music, while at the same time the inspiration of his poetry was of a much higher standard than that of Púshkin. When it is added that eight years was the entire limit of Lérmontoff’s literary career--he was killed in a duel at the age of twenty-six--the powers and the potentialities of this poet will be seen at once. Lérmontoff had Scotch blood in his veins. At least, the founder of the family was a Scotchman, George Learmonth, who, with sixty Scotchmen and Irishmen, entered the service of Poland first, and afterwards, in 1613, of Russia. The inner biography of the poet remains still but imperfectly known. It is certain that his childhood and boyhood were anything but happy. His mother was a lover of poetry--perhaps a poet herself; but he lost her when he was only three years old--she was only twenty-one. His aristocratic grandmother on the maternal side took him from his father--a poor army officer, whom the child worshipped--and educated him, preventing all intercourse between the father and the son. The boy was very gifted, and at the age of fourteen had already begun to write verses and poems--first in French, (like Púshkin), and soon in Russian. Schiller and Shakespeare and, from the age of sixteen, Byron and Shelley were his favourites. At the age of sixteen Lérmontoff entered the Moscow University, from which he was, however, excluded next year for some offence against a very uninteresting professor. He then entered a military school at St. Petersburg, to become at the age of eighteen an officer of the hussars.