NIEMCEWICZ, JULIAN URSIN, a famous Polish poet and patriot, was born in 1757 at Skoki in Lithuania. His youth was spent in learning the profession of a soldier; and at the age of twenty he entered the Lithuanian army. In
Niemen. his own corps he found Koscinsko, and imbibed from that noble spirit those patriotic sentiments which gave a direction to the whole of his subsequent career. As early as 1788 his energies and talents had begun to be consecrated to the cause of national freedom. In that same year, as one of the deputies for Livonia, he became one of the great patriotic orators of the Polish diet; in 1791, in conjunction with Weyssenhoff, he started the National and Foreign Gazette, to be a vehicle for spreading his opinions; and all the while he was fostering the spirit of nationality among the populace by the poems he published and the dramas he produced on the stage. Nor did his activity slacken at the approach of commotion and peril. In the insurrection that followed the second partition of Poland, he was a most efficient confederate of Koscinsko, both in the council and in the field. But in October 1794 the disastrous battle of Maciejowice was fought; the cause of the patriots received its death-blow; and among the captives who were carried away and immured in the fortress of St Petersburg, was the zealous Niemcewicz. A check was now put for a time upon his national ardour. For two years he lay in his damp cell, relieving the tedium of his confinement by reading the English poets of the eighteenth century, and by translating Pope's Rape of the Lock. On his liberation, there was no resource for him but to repair, with his compatriot Koscinsko, to the United States of America. There he formed new acquaintances, married a lady of New York, and became domesticated. Yet the welfare of his fatherland still lay next his heart; and the intelligence, in 1806, that Napoleon had espoused the cause of Polish liberty, hurried him back to Europe. He was soon appointed, under the newly-instituted grand-duchy of Warsaw, secretary of the senate, member of the supreme council of public education, and inspector of schools; and in these capacities he began a new career of patriotism. His activity did not flag when the Russians had regained their supremacy over Poland. Though reinstalled by the Emperor Alexander in the high office of perpetual secretary of the senate, he did not hesitate to keep alive, both with tongue and pen, the nationality of the people. In 1816 he revived the memory of the ancient glory of his country by the publication of his Historical Ballads; in 1817 he pronounced a funeral oration over Koscinsko; and in 1822 he began to celebrate the great national heroes in his Collection of Memoirs on Ancient Poland. All his efforts were evidently aiming at another revolution. Accordingly, the insurrection that broke out in November 1830 numbered the veteran Niemcewicz among its promoters. He was destined, however, to see the favourite project of his life thwarted once more. The remaining strength of his old age was spent in advancing the cause of his beloved Poland in foreign lands. He died at Montmorency, near Paris, in May 1841.
Besides the works already mentioned, Niemcewicz wrote several tragedies and comedies, novels, historical sketches, and translations from the English poets of the eighteenth century. A complete collection of his poetical works appeared in 12 vols., Leipzig, 1838-40. An autobiographical fragment, written in French, and entitled, Captivity in St Petersburg in 1794-96, was published in 1843 by the Polish Historical Committee at Paris, and was shortly afterwards translated into English by Laski. (English Cyclopaedia of Biography.)