That was his work and he succeeded admirably in what he undertook. It is even said that many of the Russianized nobles were moved to tears when they read in his lists of the Ukrainian regiments and groups their own family names and recalled the old traditions which they affected to have forgotten. Critics of the later day bewailed his frivolity and the light tone in which he worked. Yet those very men were compelled to use the language which he had forged and they profited by all that he had accomplished. That language which had been derided as a peasant tongue was revamped into a literary medium and when Kotlyarevsky died, he could look out at a world in which the great poet Shevchenko was just beginning his career. The creation of the language was the first step toward this flowering and that was the work of Kotlyarevsky who formed the speech out of an unwritten vernacular and taught his people to use it and to use it in a democratic spirit. The _Eneida_ was really the beginning of a new movement even as the comedies were the practical start of the modern Ukrainian theatre. They stand as a solid monument to Kotlyarevsky and every critic, friendly or hostile, must realize the full measure of his accomplishment. CHAPTER FOUR HRIHORI KVITKA-OSNOVYANENKO Kotlyarevsky had paved the way for a Ukrainian literature and he had set standards for it in poetry and the drama. He had shown that the Ukrainian language was a proper vehicle for literature and he had given to it a strongly democratic quality. Yet the task of winning a proper place for the literature was not yet completed. It was still necessary to break through the stubborn opposition of the gentry who then formed the bulk of the educated class. Most of these had been Polonized or Russianized and while they knew the language, they were ashamed to use it in their writings. They felt the charm of Ukraine and of the Ukrainian scenery and customs, but they preferred to write about it in the more popular and supposedly aristocratic languages. As a result there appeared in both Polish and Russian literature a large number of books which dealt with Ukrainian themes as if they were a special subdivision of the culture of the master groups. The authors regarded the Ukrainian language as suitable only for works in a lighter vein and as a source of amusement. The Ukrainians were often caricatured and derided and this procedure only increased the tendencies toward assimilation.