In 1817 Pushkin was graduated, and entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At once he was lionized by literary society, and became the leader of a brilliant but rakish clique--the story of their escapades would read like a tenderloin police-docket. At length, in 1820, the year when “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” his first great poem, was published, he committed some folly too outrageous to be condoned--probably an especially licentious expression in verse--and was banished to South Russia, where, wandering among the Caucasus ranges which color all his later work, and living near the romantic Black Sea, he remained for several years; until, in 1824, his banishment was commuted to confinement to his father’s estates. In a literary way this date marks the beginning of his new era, for he now began to bring into final form the master-poem, “Eugene Onyegin,” on which he had been working for several years--of which more presently. Some--why, I cannot conceive--have attributed Pushkin’s ungovernable disposition to the mixed blood that flowed in his veins, as was the case with the elder Dumas. Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather was that Abram Hannibal, “Peter the Great’s Arab favorite,” who was really an Abyssinian slave. The African youth was educated in France by his royal master and godfather, later admitted to his friendship, and eventually married to a Russian lady. Their son became a great Russian general. The poet himself bore unmistakable marks of his ancestry in his short curly hair and thick, sensuous lips, though his eyes were blue, his skin fair, and his hair light in hue. During these earlier years of his short life, Pushkin was profoundly influenced by Byron, and even was willing to be called “the Russian Byron.” Indeed, his license-loving and liberty-adoring nature was quite like that of his English model. This influence is seen not only in his poetic methods, but in his teachings and in his themes. The poem “Poltava,” published in 1829, takes Mazeppa for its hero, and his poetic masterpiece, “Eugene Onyegin,” published in 1828, is really Don-Juanesque. Nor is it difficult to trace other evidences of this frankly admiring spirit. Singularly enough, “Eugene Onyegin” (which Tschaikovsky has made the subject of an opera) is at once in the style of Byron (somewhat resembling his “Beppo”), while in theme, locale, and handling it throws off the trammels of Byronism, and indeed all foreignism, and becomes the first really great work of modern Russian literature. Whatever the original debt Pushkin owed to the author of “Don Juan,” in this and later work he strikes out with all the self-confidence and attainment of an original genius. So tender, so pathetic, yet so humorous, so full of human understanding, so informed with the spirit of contemporary Russian society, is this remarkable work, that its author achieved immortality in its writing. Thus did the years of exile on the paternal manor bear notable fruit.