a Russian poet, and a great improver of his native tongue, was the son of a dealer in fish at Kologori. He was born in 1711, and was fortunately taught to read; a rare circumstance at that time for a person of his condition in Russia. His natural genius for poetry was first kindled by the perusal of the Song of Solomon, translated into verse by Polotski, whose rude compositions, perhaps scarcely superior to our version of the psalms by Sternhold and Hopkins, inspired him with such an irresistible passion for the muses, that he fled from his father, who was desirous of compelling him to marry, and took refuge in the Kaikonospaski monastery at Moscow, where he had an opportunity of indulging his taste for letters, and of studying the Greek and Roman languages. In this seminary he made so considerable progress in polite literature, that he was noticed and employed by the Imperial Academy of Sciences. In 1736, he was sent, at the expense of that society, to the university of Marburg, in Hesse-Cassel, where he became a scholar of the celebrated Christian Wolf, under whom he studied universal grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. He continued at Marburg four years, during which time he applied himself with indefatigable diligence to the study of chemistry, which he afterwards pursued with still greater success, under Henckel, at Freyberg, in Saxony. In 1741 he returned to Russia; in 1742 he was chosen adjunct to the Imperial Academy; and, in the ensuing year, he was elected a member of that society, and professor of chemistry. In 1760, he was appointed inspector of the seminary then annexed to the academy; in 1764 he was gratified by the empress with the title of counsellor of state; and he died on the 4th of April that year, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. Lomonozof excelled in various kinds of composition; but his reputation is chiefly derived from his poetical compositions, the finest of which are his odes. His poetical and miscellaneous pieces appeared in three volumes; and he also published two small works relative to the history of his own country. The first, styled Annals of the Russian Sovereigns, is a short chronology of the Russian monarchs; and the second is, the Ancient History of Russia, from the Origin of that Nation to the Death of the Great Duke Yaroslaf I. in 1054.