his care and energy alone. His poetic tastes and pursuits did not prevent him from being a good man of business, and in spite of many difficulties he contrived for a time to make his father's affairs prosper.

Two years passed away, and then a series of troubles came upon Koltsof, whose life from that time offers but a gloomy picture. His father's business began to fail, and his own health to give way. His occupation became more and more distasteful to him, and an attempt he made to give it up and turn bookseller proved unsuccessful. Writing to a friend at Moscow, he says:-"I am at home, alone, and very busy. I buy pigs, I superintend the brandy making, I cut wood in the forest, I have to look after the farm, I work at home from morn till midnight." At that time he did not complain of his lot, but some time later, having just received the news of the death of his oldest friend, he writes :-"I have tried to speak in a different strain, but what can I do, surrounded as I am by this accursed business of cattle-slaying and house-building? I am utterly sick at heart. So Serebryansky is dead. Ah me! I have lost a friend whom my soul has loved so many a year, and his loss bitterly grieves me. How many a hope is now dashed down, how many a longing left unsatisfied. Only a little time ago he was a living man,

full of kindness, and now he is gone, and we shall never see him again; we may call to him, but our voice will die away in space unheard by him." Speaking at a later period of the same sorrow, he says:My life has seldom been drearier than it was last year. Serebryansky's illness was a sad affair, his death completed its misery. Only think of it! In one moment there snaps asunder what had endured for so many years. My love for him, his affectionate spirit, our desires, thoughts, impulses, expectations, hopes for the future, all to perish so suddenly. We had grown up together, we had read Shakspeare together, we had thought, we had argued together. And I was indebted to him so much! . Farewell! if it

were not for you I should have lost everything."

Another year passed away, and the horizon of Koltsof's life grew darker, while his bright moments became more few. "The terrible consciousness has long been forcing itself upon me," he writes, "that matters are growing worse in Voronej. Long have I lived there, and glared out as a wild beast does from its cage. The circle presses ever more closely on me; the world round me grows more repugnant. It is hard indeed to have to live in it; I know not how I have been able to bear with it so long." About this time he received two proposals from St. Petersburg: the one was that he should undertake the superintendence of a bookshop which was to be founded by a company; the other that he should become the commercial manager of the Otechestrenniya Zapiski, one of the leading Russian journals.

The first proposal he declined, feeling sure that the speculation to which it referred would fail on account of the capital subscribed being insufficient for the purpose. The second he would gladly have entertained, but it was impossible for him to leave Voronej directly, on account of the state of his father's business and his own liabilities in connection with it. This was a great disappointment to him, but he still hoped to find some similar opening. "I do all I can," he wrote to one of his friends; "I struggle with all my strength, and I mean to fight to the last. I do all that I can; and if in spite of that I fail, I shall have no reason to be ashamed of myself." In the autumn of 1840 he went once more to St. Petersburg and Moscow. It was his last visit, and he enjoyed it greatly, staying at St. Petersburg about three months in the house of an intimate friend. He felt greatly tempted to fix his residence in that city, but he was afraid of entering upon business without capital, and he could not bear to settle down. as a mere clerk or commercial agent. If he could have raised two or three hundred pounds he would have opened a bookshop, and devoted all his spare time to making up for the deficiencies of his early education. But he could not obtain what he wanted; so after seeing the new year in among his friends at Moscow, he unwillingly returned to Voronej. "You cannot think," he writes to a friend, "how I hate going home. The very idea of it strikes cold to my heart; yet I must go; necessity's iron force compels me."

On his return home Koltsof found all his affairs in confusion, and spent some time in trying to restore them to order. Then he made up his mind that, whatever might be the result, he would go to St. Petersburg and try his fortune there. But just at that time he fell ill, and during Passion Week he lay at death's door. He was so fortunate as to be attended by a doctor who was a thoroughly kind and good man, and who visited him more from friendship than from interest, knowing beforehand that the fees he was likely to get would not be very numerous. Koltsof said to him when the illness was at its highest, "Doctor, if my disease is incurable, and you are only protracting my life for a time, do not do so any longer; let me die at once; the sooner the better for me and the easier for you.' However, the doctor vouched for the certainty of a cure, and the result showed that he was right. Koltsof recovered; but before long a fresh trouble came upon him, which led to a second attack. His biographer rapidly passes over this story of a passion which brought a shortlived bliss for which a heavy price had to be paid. In his words, as “an unhappy love had shadowed the morning of Koltsof's life, so did an unhappy love light up the evening of his life with a stately, crimson, but baleful glare." Koltsof once more loved, and his love was returned with passion by one who is described as "beautiful, intellectual, accomplished, and of a character which was just

suitable for his impulsive nature." At length she was obliged to leave Voronej, and the pain of parting from her brought back his former illness. His friendly doctor came again to his aid; but symptoms of consumption soon manifested themselves, and it became apparent that his life was not likely to last long. He went to the house of a relative who lived on the banks of the Don, and tried the effect of a course of baths, but they gave him only temporary relief. On his return he felt that his days were numbered, and though at times hope would spring up within him, and he would recur to the idea of settling at St. Petersburg, he generally spoke of himself as a doomed man. But he kept up his courage, and regarded his approaching fate with tranquillity. A letter written at this time to one of his friends ends with these words, "Now I must say farewell! Is it for long? I know not; but that word sounds sadly to me. But still, farewell, and for the third time, farewell! If I were a woman, I should feel inclined for tears now." All this time circumstances were greatly against his recovery. Quiet was absolutely necessary for him, but he could not obtain it. Nobody, except his mother, seemed to care for him, and he was left almost destitute. Often he had no means of paying his doctor; sometimes he was left without a meal, without even the tea which is such a necessary of life in Russia. A wedding took place about this time in the house where he lay, and this is his description of the way in which he was treated: Every one made a thoroughfare of my room. They washed the floors, although damp is deadly to me. They smoked tobacco and burnt perfumes in it every day, greatly to the discomfort of my lungs. The inflammation returned, and for some days my life hung upon a hair. My doctor came to see me three times a day, though I often had very little to give him. Yet at that time our house was open to visitors every evening. There was nothing but noise, racket, running to and fro. My door never remained shut an instant from morning till midnight.' At length, however, the wedding came to an end, and he was left once more in peace. "Thank God," he says, "I now live in quiet. My room is silent again, my meals are prepared punctually, I have tea and sugar now, and am in want of nothing." From this time little more is known of the progress of his malady. The last letter he wrote to his friend Bielinsky was dated February 27, 1842. About the end of the year came the news that he had died on the 19th of October, being then in the thirty-fourth year of his age.

Thus ended the career of one who was not strong enough for the battle of life; a man of vigorous intellect, of high and generous feeling, of refined taste, of noble impulses, but wanting in that physical strength without which it is so hard for any one to achieve success, especially one who occupied such a position as Koltsof's was.

He was most unfortunately situated. His relatives and his fellowcitizens did not know what to think of him, and lent him no aid, and his want of means remained throughout his life a fatal gulf between himself and literary success. He knew well enough that he could not expect to live by his verses. "What would people give for them?" he says in one of his letters. "What should I get by them in a year? Enough for shoe-leather and groceries; no more." If he had been but a little more independent, he might have done much, for he ardently longed to give himself up to study, to learn languages, and to travel. If he had lived till the present time, he would have formed a valuable addition to the increasing body of thoughtful and enthusiastic men who are endeavouring to raise the mass of their countrymen from the degraded state in which they have lain so long, and to open their eyes to the promise of the new day which they themselves see dawning for Russia; and even in his native town he would at last have been rightly appreciated, for it has greatly progressed in intellectual culture since the time of his boyhood, when it could scarcely support one poor bookshop.

After Koltsof's death his verses were gathered together from the magazines and other journals in which they lay scattered, and were published by his friend Bielinsky, from whose interesting memoir of the poet the present sketch is mainly derived. The collection gained an immediate popularity in Russia, passing in a short time through several editions. It is, however, almost impossible for any one to form a correct opinion of the merits of Koltsof's poems who is ignorant of the language in which they were written, for most of them defy translation. Bodenstedt, who calls Koltsof" Der russische Burns," has published a version of eight of them in his poems "Aus der Heimat und Fremde," and Prince Elim Mestcherski has given a paraphrase of two other pieces in his "Etudes Russes; " but these attempts give very little idea of Koltsof's real merit. In the opinion of Russian critics his best poems are the songs which he puts into the mouths of peasants, or in which he describes the manner of life and the tone of thought of the labouring classes. Written in the style of the original national songs, and adapted to their strange and melancholy airs, they are said to possess a peculiar charm for those to whom all their allusions come home, which the stranger is generally unable to detect. Many of them are exceedingly simple, for Koltsof in these pieces discarded all embellishment, and aimed at conveying an idea of the peasant's actual existence, instead of produing an idealised picture of it. Some of the songs relate to love, but not all. The themes of many are poverty, want, the desperate struggle for a living, the loss of money, the hardships of everyday life. In one poem the serf sits in his hut, thinking how lonely his life is; in another he balances the evils of going abroad to live among strangers, and of staying at home to quarrel with an old

father, to tell wearisome tales, and to grow old and dull. There is no unreal sentiment in Koltsof's poetry: he describes people as they are, and makes them speak in natural unaffected language, differing in this respect, says Bielinsky, from such writers as Delvig, Merzliakof, or even Pushkin; the first of whom turned the Russian peasant into a German or Italian cavalier, while the second made him a Russian indeed, but a Russian gentleman who has chosen to play a peasant's part. Pushkin's songs are far superior to theirs, but the hand of the artist is too apparent in them; whereas Koltsof's appear perfectly natural, and do not at all betray the workman's craft. It seems a hopeless task to attempt to translate any of the pieces of this class. Their words might be rendered with tolerable accuracy, but their grace and melody would be utterly lost in the operation.

The landscape pieces which occur here and there are easier to deal with; but a great part of their charm depends on the associations they awake in the minds of those who are familiar with the scenes described, and who recognise at once the picture conveyed in a single phrase, the colour or the perfume which a fitting epithet suggests. An ardent lover of nature, Koltsof delighted in portraying her charms, finding an endless enjoyment in the sight of the golden cornfield, stretching away unbroken to the horizon, or the mighty forest, with its mysterious shades and interminable untrodden glades, or the endless undulations of the open Steppe. The following lines are a literal translation of part of an unrhymed poem called the "Season of Love," which is a fair specimen of one class of Koltsof's compositions :

"In the spring the green Steppe

Is all covered with flowers;

All alive with the voices

Of sweet-singing birds.
Through the day and the night
To the strange songs they sing
There listens a maiden,
Who, rapt in their notes,
Does not see, does not feel,
That their melody breathes
The enchantments of Love.

To the maiden who listens,
The magic-fraught breeze
Wafts the heartache of love.
Then she draws a long breath,
And her snowy breast heaves
Like deep waters disturbed.
To her cheek comes a glow,

And a cloud dims her eyes:
O'er the Steppe falls the darkness,

The evening sky burns."

Koltsof was a man of genuine religious feeling; and such a spirit of trustful resignation breathes in his graver poems, such a yearning