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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLVI. JUNE, 1845. VOL. LVII.


Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article. The index for Volume 57 is included at the
end of this issue.


CONTENTS.


PUSHKIN, THE RUSSIAN POET. No. I.,                             657

THE NOVEL AND THE DRAMA,                                       679

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVII.,           688

LEBRUN'S LAWSUIT,                                              705

CENNINO CENNINI ON PAINTING,                                   717

AESTHETICS OF DRESS. NO. IV.,                                   731

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,                                     739

HANNIBAL,                                                      752

STANZAS WRITTEN AFTER THE FUNERAL OF ADMIRAL SIR DAVID
MILNE, C.G.B.,                                                 766

STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD,                          768

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. V.--DRYDEN
ON CHAUCER--CONCLUDED,                                         771

INDEX,                                                         794


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PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.




BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLVI. JUNE, 1845. VOL. LVII.




PUSHKIN, THE RUSSIAN POET.

NO. I.

SKETCH OF PUSHKIN'S LIFE AND WORKS, BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A. OF
CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL
ALEXANDER LYCEUM, TRANSLATOR OF "THE HERETIC," &C. &C.


Among the many striking analogies which exist between the physical and
intellectual creations, and exhibit the uniform method adopted by
Supreme Wisdom in the production of what is most immortal and most
precious in the world of thought, as well as of what is most useful and
beautiful in the world of matter, there is one which cannot fail to
arise before the most actual and commonplace imagination. This is, the
great apparent care exhibited by nature in the preparation of the
_nidus_--or matrix, if we may so style it--in which the genius of the
great man is to be perfected and elaborated. Nature creates nothing in
sport; and as much foresight--possibly even more--is displayed in the
often complicated and intricate machinery of concurrent causes which
prepare the development of great literary genius, as in the elaborate
in-foldings which protect from injury the germ of the future oak, or the
deep-laid and mysterious bed, and the unimaginable ages of growth and
hardening, necessary to the water of the diamond, or to the purity of
the gold.

Pushkin is undoubtedly one of that small number of names, which have
become incorporated and identified with the literature of their country;
at once the type and the expression of that country's nationality--one
of that small but illustrious bard, whose writings have become part of
the very household language of their native land--whose lightest words
may be incessantly heard from the lips of all classes; and whose
expressions may be said, like those of Shakspeare, of Moliere, and of
Cervantes, to have become the natural forms embodying the ideas which
they have expressed, and in expressing, consecrated. In a word, Pushkin
is undeniably and essentially the great national poet of Russia.

In tracing, therefore, this author's double existence, and in essaying
to give some account of his external as well as his interior life--in
sketching the poet and the man--we cannot fail to remark a striking
exemplification of the principle to which we have alluded; and as we
accompany, in respectful admiration, his short but brilliant career, we
shall have incessant occasion to remember the laws which regulated its
march--laws ever-acting and eternal, and no less apparent to the eye of
enlightened criticism, than are the mighty physical influences which
guide the planets in their course, to the abstract reason of the
astronomer.

Alexander Pushkin was born (as if destiny had intended, in assigning
his birth-place--the ancient capital of Russia, and still the
dwelling-place of all that is most intense in Russian nationality--to
predict all the stuff and groundwork of his character) at Moscow, on the
26th of May 1799. His family, by the paternal side, was one of the most
ancient and distinguished in the empire, and was descended from Ratcha,
a German--probably a Teutonic knight--who settled in Muscovy in the
thirteenth century, and took service under Alexander Nevskii,
(1252-1262,) and who is the parent root from which spring many of the
most illustrious houses in Russia--those of Pushkin, of Buturlin, of
Kamenskii, and of Meteloff. Nor was the paternal line of Pushkin's house
undistinguished for other triumphs than those recorded in the annals of
war; his grandfather, Vassilii Lvovitch Pushkin, was a poet of
considerable reputation, and was honoured, no less than Alexander's
father, with the intimacy of the most illustrious literary men of his
age--of Dmitrieff, Karamzin, and Jukovskii.

But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance connected with Pushkin's
origin--a circumstance of peculiar significance to those who, like
ourselves, are believers in the influence, on human character, of
_race_, or _blood_, is the fact of his having been the grandson, by the
mother's side, of an African. The cold blood of the north, transmitted
to his veins from the rude warrior of Germany, was thus mingled with
that liquid lightning which circles through the fervid bosom of the
children of the desert; and this crossing of the race (to use the
language of the course) produced an undeniable modification in our
poet's character. His maternal grandfather was a <DW64>, brought to
Russia when a child by Peter the Great, and whose subsequent career was
one of the most romantic that can be imagined. The wonderful Tsar gave
his sable protege, whose name was Annibal, a good education, and
admitted him into the marine service of the empire--a service in which
he reached (in the reign of Catharine) the rank of admiral. He took part
in the attack upon Navarin under Orloff, and died after a long and
distinguished career of service, having founded, in his new country, the
family of Annibaloff, of which Pushkin was the most distinguished
ornament, and of whose African origin the poet, both in personal
appearance and in mental physiognomy, bore the most unequivocal marks.
To the memory of this singular progenitor, Pushkin has consecrated more
than one of his smaller works, and has frequently alluded to the African
blood which he inherited from the admiral.

In 1811, Pushkin obtained (through the interest of Turgenieff, to whom
Russia is thus, in some sort, indebted for her great poet) admission
into the Imperial Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo, where he was to receive the
education, and to form the friendships, which so strongly, not
only the literary productions of his whole career, but undoubtedly
modified, to a considerable extent, the personal character of the poet.
This institution, then recently established by the Emperor Alexander,
and always honoured by the peculiar favour and protection of its
illustrious founder, was modelled on the plan of those _lycees_ which
France owed to the genius of Napoleon; and was intended to confer upon
its pupils the advantage of a complete encyclopedic education, and, not
only embracing the preparatory or school course, but also the academic
_curriculum_ of a university, was calculated to dismiss the students, at
the end of their course of training, immediately into active life. The
Lyceum must be undoubtedly considered as having nursed in its bosom a
greater number of distinguished men than any other educational
institution in the country; and our readers may judge of the peculiar
privileges enjoyed by this establishment, (the primary object of whose
foundation was, that of furnishing to the higher civil departments in
the government, and to the ministry of foreign affairs in particular, a
supply of able and accomplished _employes_,) from the fact of its having
been located by the emperor in a wing of the palace of Tsarskoe
Selo--the favourite summer residence of the Tsars of Russia since the
time of Catharine II. It is to the last-named sovereign, as is well
known to travellers, that this celebrated spot is indebted for its
splendid palace and magnificent gardens, forming, perhaps, the most
striking object which gratifies the stranger's curiosity in the env