A gnat flew by, perceived the plight of the carriage, and was anxious to do it a good turn, and help it out. So it began to goad the horses and the driver, to make the driver on his box more agile, and that the horses might draw with more vim. Now it stung the driver, now the horses; it perspired, worked with might and main, but all in vain; it buzzed and buzzed, but all its songs were useless; there was not the slightest sign that the carriage would move; so after having laboured hard, it flew away. In the meanwhile, the horses had rested themselves, and dragged the huge mass out of the sand. The gnat saw the carriage from afar, and said: “How foolish it all was of me to abandon the carriage just as it was to move! ’Tis true I have worked hard in the sand, but at least I have moved the carriage.”
FOUR ANSWERS
You ask me, my friend, what I would do: (1) if I were a small man and a small gentleman; (2) if I were a great man and a small gentleman; (3) if I were a great man and a great gentleman; (4) if I were a small man and a great gentleman. To the first question I answer: I should use all my endeavour to become acquainted in the houses of distinguished people and men of power; I would not allow a single holiday to pass, without making the round of the city, in order to give the compliments of the season; I would walk on tiptoes in the antechambers of the mighty, and would treat their valets to tobacco; I would learn to play all kinds of games, for when you play cards you can sit down shoulder to shoulder with the most distinguished people, and then bend over to them and say in a low tone: “I have the honour to report to your Excellency such and such an affair,” or again become bolder and exclaim: “You have thirteen and I fourteen.” I would not dispute anything, but would only say: “Just so; certainly so; most certainly so; absolutely so.” I would tell the whole world that such and such a distinguished gentleman had condescended to speak to me, and if I could not say so truthfully, I would lie about it, for nothing so adorns speech as a lie, to which poets are witnesses.
Finally, I would obtain by humility and flattery a profitable place, but above all I would strive to become a governor, for that place is profitable, honourable and easy. It is profitable, because everybody brings gifts; it is honourable, because everybody bows before a governor; it is easy, because there is very little work to do, and that is done by a secretary or scribe, and, they being sworn people, one may entirely rely upon them. A scribe has been created by God by whom man has been created, and that opinion is foolish which assumes that a scribe’s soul is devoid of virtue. I believe there is little difference between a man and a scribe, much less difference than between a scribe and any other creature.
If I were a great man and a small gentleman, I would, in my constant attempt to be useful to my country and the world at large, never become burdensome to anyone, and would put all my reliance upon my worth and my deserts to my country; and if I should find myself deceived in this, I should become insane from so much patience, and should be a man who not only does nothing, but even thinks nothing.
If I were a great man and a great gentleman, I would without cessation think of the welfare of my country, of incitements to virtue and dignity, the reward of merit, the suppression of vice and lawlessness, the increase of learning, the cheapening of the necessaries of life, the preservation of justice, the punishment for taking bribes, for grasping, robbery and theft, the diminution of lying, flattery, hypocrisy and drunkenness, the expulsion of superstition, the abatement of unnecessary luxury, the limitation of games at cards which rob people of their valuable time, the education, the founding and maintenance of schools, the maintenance of a well-organised army, the scorn of rudeness, and the eradication of parasitism.
But if I were a small man and a great gentleman, I would live in great magnificence, for such magnificence is rarely to be found in a great soul; but I will not say what else I would do.
Vasíli Ivánovich Máykov. (1728-1778.)
Máykov was the son of a landed proprietor. He entered military service, in 1766 was made Associate Governor of Moscow, and occupied other high offices. He began to write early and, being an admirer of Sumarókov,—like all the other writers of his day,—he wrote odes, eulogies, fables, tragedies, all of them in the pseudo-classic style. He knew no foreign languages, and his imitations are at second hand. This, however, gave him a great advantage over his contemporaries, in that he was better acquainted with Russian reality than with foreign models. His mock-heroic poem Eliséy, or Excited Bacchus, from which “The Battle of the Zimogórans and Valdáyans,” given below, is an extract, is far superior for real humour, Russian environment and good popular diction to anything else produced by the Russian writers of the eighteenth century; and the undisputed popularity of the Eliséy, which was not dimmed even by Bogdanóvich’s Psyche, was well merited.