All this brings us back to Ivan Kotlyarevsky, the talented founder of modern Ukrainian literature. He was born in 1769 in Poltava in an impoverished noble family. This was just five years after the abolition of the Hetmanate and but six years before the destruction of the Sich. When the boy was sixteen, the last vestiges of Ukrainian autonomy were abolished. Thus in his youthful years he passed through the depressing atmosphere of the downfall of the Ukrainian state. He studied in the Seminary at Poltava and won a certain reputation as a poet. This did not give him a livelihood and so for several years he remained as a private tutor in the homes of various nobles. Then he entered the Russian civil service and later served in the army as a captain. When he retired from this, he secured a position as inspector in one of the Poltava schools for the children of impoverished nobles. Later as a welcome guest at the home of the Governor General Repnin, he became director of the theatre at Poltava. He died in 1838. His was a life lived in general superficial agreement with the new order. There is no record that Kotlyarevsky met with any difficulties because of his use of the Ukrainian language or because of his ideas and it is perhaps a little extreme to credit him with far-reaching separatist ideas. At the same time he clearly recognized the difference between the Ukrainians and the Russians. He had a lively interest in the conditions of his people and he deeply regretted that history had not developed differently. He was not afraid to say that conditions as he knew them were not ideal but it would be rash to press his views too far, when we consider the general atmosphere of his times. During his lifetime also there began the intense interest in folk songs and folk customs. Rousseau had taught an interest in the lives of the simple people and Herder as early as 1773 had begun to write his glorification of the folksongs of the people. Everywhere in Europe this form of study was growing. Scientists and poets alike worked on the same themes and hardly a year passed without some new work in this field. Macpherson’s _Ossian_ was already known in Russian as well as in French and German. During the reign of Catherine the _Armament of Ihor_ had come to light and in the early nineties scholars and courtiers “discovered” the idol of Tmuturakan and established a vogue for “South Russian” antiquities.