SHISHKOFF, ALEXANDER SEMENOWITSCH, a Russian author, admiral, and statesman, knight of several orders, and president of the Russian Academy, was born in 1754, and was educated at the Naval Cadet Corps. Having entered the naval service, he subsequently visited, both professionally and privately, Sweden, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. He began his career of authorship while a cadet in the navy, by executing translations, poems, and dramas. In his later years he devoted his attention exclusively for long years to the benefiting of persons connected with the naval service of Russia. His Naval Service, St Petersburg, 1793; his Marine Lexicon, St Petersburg, 1795; his Collection of Journals during Voyages at Sea, St Petersburg, 1800; and his Historical Records of the Navy, published some time after, all belong to this class. After an estrangement of twenty years, he returned to pure literature, the darling of his early years. His effective, but too hasty book, Considerations on the Old and New Styles of the Russian Language, appeared in 1802, and has been frequently reprinted. His Additional Remarks to this volume appeared in 1804, and the Essays of La Harpe in 1808. A tart review of this work occasioned a series of replies and retorts, which wound up with The Easiest Way of Replying to a Criticism, 1811, from the pen of the reviewer, and is acknowledged to be one of the most acute works of a polemical nature in the Russian language. In 1811 appeared Shishkoff's Dialogues on Literature, and in 1812 he was made secretary of state, in which capacity he accompanied the Emperor Alexander, and gleaned the materials of his Memoirs of the War in 1812, published in 1816 at St Petersburg. The latter work is perhaps the best which he has written. It overflows with patriotism and zeal for the glory of Russia, and is written in a strain of high-wrought, fervid eloquence. In 1818 appeared his prose translation of Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata, which closed his public career of authorship. Many of his later writings are reported to be still in manuscript; and if one can trust to the intelligence which rumour conveys, they had better remain so. Shishkoff
Shitomir died in 1841, and his works appeared in 14 vols. in 1823-34.