ADAM, the most illustrious poet of Poland, was born at Nowogrodek in Lithuania in 1798, of a noble but poor family. From the district school of his native village he passed to the gymnasium of Minsk, and in 1815 to the university of Wilna, where his uncle was one of the professors, and where our own poet Campbell was once a candidate for the office of regent. This university, since suppressed by the Russian government, was then celebrated as a school of mathematics and natural science; and Mickiewicz early showed a strong inclination for chemistry and natural history, but gave no indication at that time to his friends of being possessed of any talent for verse. His first collection of poems appeared in two slim volumes at Wilna in 1822, after he had received the appointment of professor of classical literature at Kowno. They were received with extraordinary enthusiasm by the public; and the general voice of his country, and of all Slavonic nations, assigned him the name of the "Polish Byron," and pronounced him the greatest poet of Poland. The larger portion of these poems, however, which consist mainly of ballads, remind the reader rather of Monk Lewis than of Byron. They are founded on the wild heathen superstitions and old pagan ballads of the Lithuanian peasantry, which the poet in his boyhood had gathered up out of the obscure and neglected remnants of a dialect presenting the closest affinities with the Sanscrit. Besides the ballads these early volumes contain two longer poems of superior value. One of them, Grażyna, a Lithuanian Tale,—said to have inspired the unfortunate heroïse Emilia Plater, who fought so bravely in the Polish ranks against Russia in 1830,—is the story of a Lithuanian princess who fell fighting in her husband's armour at the head of his retainers, rather than permit him, through private jealousy, to join his forces to the enemies of his country. The other, Dziady (The Ancestors), is a wild and irregular drama, full of powerful but revolting poetry, inspired by loathsome superstition and dark horror. He was assailed by Dmochowski, the Polish translator of Homer, among other critics, for his "romantic" innovations; but, despite this critical hostility, a company of young poets rapidly sprung up in and around Wilna, and formed themselves into the "School of Mickiewicz." But he was not destined long to enjoy peace the honours of the poetical chief. His friend Zan had formed a society at Wilna for the cultivation of the Polish language and literature, of which the enthusiastic poet and a number of the alumni of the university were members. The jealousy of Russia was excited, and the society was dissolved. The indefatigable Zan, after repeated attempts to reorganize his cherished association, was condemned in 1824 to perpetual imprisonment; while his friend Mickiewicz and others escaped with a sentence of perpetual banishment in the Russian interior. The Polish poet was conveyed to St Petersburg whither his fame had already travelled, and he was received in the literary circles of that capital with great marks of respect. Here in 1824, while Byron was dying at Missolonghi, the Polish Byron, Adam Mickiewicz, and the Russian Byron, Alexander Pushkin, first met; and a keen sympathy soon sprang up between the illustrious Polish exile and the leading men of letters of the Russian capital. But genial literary intercourse and a spirit of revolution seemed to the watchful mind of despotism to be all but synonymous terms; and Mickiewicz got prompt orders to leave St Petersburg for Odessa. A tour in the Crimea resulted in a collection of Crimean Sonnets, which met with great success,—the author little dreaming that he should live to witness far other materials for moralizing on the "Steppe of Eupatoria," and the "old castle of Balaklava," than he found in the records left by the cultivated Greek, the enterprising Genoese, and the relentless Turk, on that memorable peninsula. Mickiewicz was invited to form one of the household of Prince Galitzin, governor of Moscow; and was subsequently permitted to return to the capital, where he published his Conrad Wallenrod in 1828, a romantic tale of great power, founded on a real historical character of Lithuania. The book, though breathing a deep spirit of freedom, escaped the political censorship of St Petersburg, though not of Warsaw and Wilna, by a dexterous preface, which informed the reader that the subject was chosen because it belonged entirely to the past, and because it could have no relation to the interests of the present. Having obtained permission to travel, Mickiewicz visited Goethe at Weimar, and had just made the acquaintance of Fennimore Cooper at Rome when news of the insurrection of Warsaw of 1830 reached him. He was too late to join his countrymen in their unsuccessful struggle, and he resolved to retire to Dresden, where he composed another part of his dramatic poem of Dziady. He makes himself the hero, and introduces more than one of his fellow-exiles by their real names. The first scene, which is placed in the corridor of the Basilian convent on the night of Christmas, is written with such immense power that it was said by an able critic to place the author on a level with Goethe. It was published at Paris in 1832, where his last long poem, and some say his finest, of Pan Tadeusz (Sir Thaddeus), appeared two years afterwards.

The star of Mickiewicz had now reached its zenith. On the establishment of a chair for the Slavonic languages and literature in the College of France in 1840, the choice of Mickiewicz as professor was considered a peculiarly happy one. Unfortunately it turned out the very opposite. He had fallen under the influence of a religious charlatan, named Tomianski, some years before, who persuaded him that he had cured Madame Mickiewicz of a serious illness by means of mesmerism. The daring imagination of the poet, by long brooding over the dark mysteries accompanying such phenomena, plunged him into a sea of the wildest fanaticism. After a few brilliant lectures on Slavonic literature, he addressed his audience on "the worship of Napoleon," and the "Mesmerism" of some mysterious Pole, who, in 1844, proved to be the quack mesmerist. The deluded poet had to leave Paris; but he was permitted to retain the nominal professorship till 1851, when he was made sub-librarian at the Arsenal. He was sent on a mission to the East by the French emperor in 1855; and died at Constantinople on the 27th of November of the same year. His remains were removed to France, and interred at Montmorency, near Paris. No poet of Europe, during the last quarter of a century, had achieved so much as Mickiewicz, and his name stands unquestionably first in the literature of his country. His prose works, however (one of which, The Polish Pilgrimage, has been translated into English), do not occupy a high position. An edition of his works was published in 4 vols., Paris, 1836, entitled Pisma Adama Mickiewicza, na novo przejrzane, dopełnione, &c.