[140] At Chesma, where, on July 26, 1770, the Turkish fleet was destroyed.
[141] Count Orlóv, commander of the fleet.
[142] Ship named The Three Saints.
[143] An agent of the French Government had fortified the Dardanelles.
Mikhaíl Matvyéevich Kheráskov. (1733-1807.)
The son of a Wallachian emigrant, Kheráskov served in succession in the army, the Kommerz-Kolleg (Ministry of Finances) and the Moscow University, where he was first Director and later Curator. He began to write early, and for half a century produced a very large number of poems in every imaginable field of the pseudo-classic school. They now appall us with their inane voluminousness, but in his day he was regarded as a great poet, a veritable Russian Homer. His best heroic epics are his Rossiad and Vladímir Regenerated. The first, containing some ten thousand verses, celebrates the conquest of Kazán by Iván the Terrible; the second, of even more imposing length, tells of the introduction of Christianity into Russia. Though containing some fine passages, these epics reveal too much the influence of Vergil and Tasso, and make rather dreary reading.
FROM THE “ROSSIAD”
I sing Russia delivered from the barbarians, the trampled power of the Tartars, and their pride subdued, the stir of ancient mights, their labours, bloody strife, Russia’s victory, Kazán destroyed! How from the circle of those times, the beginning of peaceful years, a bright dawn has shone forth in Russia!
Oh, thou gleamest above the radiant stars, spirit of poetry! Come from thy heights, and shed over my weak and dim creation thy light, thy art and illumination! Open, O eternity, to me the gates of those habitations where all earthly care is cast away, where the souls of the righteous receive their rewards, where fame and crowns are deemed a vanity, where before the star-sprinkled altar the lowest slave stands in a row with a king, where the poor man forgets his misery, the unfortunate his grief, where every man will be equal to every other. Eternity, reveal thyself to me, that with my lyre I may attract the attention of the nations and their kings!