ALEXANDER SERGEJEWITCH, the most distinguished poet of Russia, was born on the 26th of May (June 7) 1799. He was sprung from an ancient Russian family, whose name figures in the history of the country, and who is introduced among the dramatis personae of one of the poet's historical plays. He was likewise of Moorish descent. The daughter of Hannibal, a Moor whom Peter the Great bought and bred into a general, had married the great-grandfather of the poet, and, if we may trust the testimony of a bust, transmitted a tint of the Moorish blood to the young genius, who, in a few generations, was to render her family immortal. During his early education he seems to have showed capabilities of the first order. He entered the lyceum at Tsarskoe-selo in 1811, where he was distinguished for general ability and for an excellent memory; but he seems to have been deficient in concentra- tive power (such, at least, as the lyceum required), and too frequently squandered his time in aimless pleasures. Here he began to sow his wild oats, and wrote, amid much youthful fervour and excitement, numerous poetical pieces. His Ruslan and Ljudmila, a tale in verse after the manner of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, closed the first period of his irregular poetical career. He had for his teachers at the lyceum Dershawin, Shukowski, and Kunitzin, men whom the poet ceased not to mention with respect and admiration, and two of whom were then the most celebrated poets of Russia. At the age of eighteen (1817) he left the institution and entered the civil service. He obtained a situation in the department for foreign affairs, and, full of the ardour of youth and of a fiery, poetic temperament, he found himself at once amid the gay and brilliant circles of the northern capital. The poem just referred to was written at the age of one-and-twenty. It was a real work of art. The critics attacked it because it was new and out of their line, and the public devoured it. It may be considered as the first great poetical work in the Russian language, and from it dates an important era in Russian literature. He now entered on his second period—a period characterized by a revolutionary spirit and a tone of disappointment and scepticism. It begins with Plevnik Raskaskoi, or "Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1822), and ends with the greatest and most remarkable of his works, Eugene Onegin (1825-1828). His Ode to Liberty cost him his freedom, and he was exiled to Bessarabia from 1820 to 1825. During this period his lyrical pieces give us his mental autobiography. In his more deliberate compositions Lord Byron exerted a great influence over the poetical development of Pushkin. The poets are similar in their form; their heroes and heroines resemble each other; and Pushkin's gloomy colouring and mysterious connection between guilt and fate always remind the reader of the great English poet. This Byronic phase of Pushkin's development closed with this second period, when he stepped forth into entire artistic independence and nationality. The poet returned from his Caucasian retirement at the invitation of the new emperor Nicholas, shorn of much of his bacchanalian wildness and license, and prepared to enter upon the third and the closing period of his career. He accepted, under a regime of terrorism, the office of historiographer of Peter I., with an annual salary of 6000 rubles (L1350). He was now looked upon as a traitor to the cause of liberty; but three years of exile to the mouths of the Danube had probably cooled his enthusiasm. As the first fruits of his new office, he, in 1827, wrote a history of the insurrection of Pugatshoff. He passed the season of autumn, his favourite period for literary production, at his country seat, Michailowsk, in the province of Pskoff, in the company of an old nurse to whom he read the MSS. of his new works. In 1829 he published his historical poem Poltava, a highly poetical representation of the time when his country began its great development under Peter the Great. To the same period also belongs his historical drama of Boris Godunoff, which some critics place next Onegin in point of poetical beauty. As a dramatic work, however, it is inferior to his Stone Guest (1836). During the same year (1829) he followed the triumphant march of Field-Marshal Paskiewitch to Erzeroum, and in February 1831 he married. The handful of years which were yet in store for him were years of unmingled happiness. He wrote the charming novel, The Daughter of the Captive, and took an active share in the publication of a periodical called The Reading Library. He likewise published some of his most finished poems, and kept working at his History of Peter the Great, an achievement which he was not destined to complete. On the 27th of January 1837, Pushkin, who had become involved in a duel with one Van Heeckerin, a foreigner, received a wound which proved mortal on the 29th of the same month (February 10). Thus died the greatest poet which Russia has yet known, in the prime of his manhood and in the meridian of his genius. The emperor showed great kindness to the poet's widow and family, and commanded a splendid edition of his whole works to be published at his own expense. See Sotchinenia A. Pushkina, izdanie Anenkov ("The works of A. Pushkin, edited by Anenkov"), 7 vols., St Petersburg, 1854-57. (See the National Review for 1858.)