Vladislav Alexandrovitch, a celebrated Russian tragic poet, was born in the government of Tver in 1770. The early part of his life was spent in the public service. At the age of six he entered the army as a cadet, and on retiring from military life he had attained to the rank of major-general, and received a civil appointment. Meanwhile he devoted his leisure to the composition of tragedy; and surpassed all preceding Russian dramatists in his knowledge of stage effect, in the conception of his plots, in the pathos of his incidents, and in the warmth and harmony of his poetical colouring. The Death of Oleg in 1798, Odipus not long afterwards, Fingal in 1805, and Demetrii Donskoi in 1807, were all received with deserved applause by the public. The only other tragedy that the author produced, although he retired from the public service in 1808, was Polyxena in 1809. During the rest of his life a settled melancholy seems to have overclouded his mind and chilled his imaginative faculty. He died in 1816. The complete works of Ozerov, containing, besides his tragedies, some lyric poems, and accompanied by a Life, were published by Prince Viazemsky, in 2 vols., St Petersburg, 1818.