NESTOR, whose secular name is not known, was a native of Russia, and the earliest historian of the north. He was born in 1056 at Bielozero; and in the 19th year of his age he assumed the monastic habit in the convent of Petcherski at Kiof, and took the name of Nestor. He there made a considerable proficiency in the Greek language: but seems to have formed his style and manner rather from the Byzantine historians, Cedrenus, Zonaras, and Syncellus, than from the ancient classics. The time of Nestor's death is not ascertained; but he is supposed to have lived to an advanced age, and to have died about the year 1115.
His great work is his Chronicle, to which he has prefixed an introduction, which after a short sketch of the early state of the world, taken from the Byzantine writers, contains a geographical description of Russia and the adjacent regions; an account of the Slavonian nations, their manners, their emigrations from the banks of the Danube, their dispersion, and settlement in the several countries wherein their descendants are now established. He then enters upon a chronological series of the Russian annals, from the year 858 to about 1113. His style is simple and unadorned, such as suits a mere recorder of facts; but his chronological exact-
ness, though it renders his narrative dry and tedious, contributes to ascertain the era and authenticity of the Nestorians, events which he relates.
It is remarkable (says Mr Coxe, from whom we have taken this narrative), that an author of such importance, whose name frequently occurs in the early Russian books, should have remained in obscurity above 600 years; and been scarcely known to his modern countrymen, the origin and actions of whose ancestors he records with such circumstantial exactness. A copy of his Chronicle was given in 1668 by Prince Radzivil to the library of Königsburg, where it lay unnoticed till Peter the Great, in his passage through that town, ordered a transcript of it to be sent to Peterburgh. But it still was not known as the performance of Nestor: for when Muller in 1732 published the first part of a German translation, he mentioned it as the work of the abbot Theodosius of Kiof; an error which arose from the following circumstance: The ingenious editor not being at that time sufficiently acquainted with the Slavonian tongue, employed an interpreter, who, by mistaking a letter in the title, supposed it to have been written by a person whose name was Theodosius. This ridiculous blunder was soon circulated and copied by many foreign writers, even long after it had been candidly acknowledged and corrected by Muller.