In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril3 and Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisláff, Sviatopólk, and Kótsel, then chiefs of the Moravians.

The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,4 to add a number of other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any necessity.

These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the Russian) varied surprisingly little in their form,5 and perhaps without any change whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern alphabet of the Russian language; an examination of which would go far, in our opinion, to settle the long agitated question respecting the ancient pronunciation of the classic languages, particularly as Cyril and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a language totally foreign from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.

In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the first monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril immediately after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken at Thessalonika was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely Greek words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of the version being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the Scriptures were not translated into any specific spoken dialect at all; but that a kind of mezzo-termine was selected—or rather formed—for the purpose. What we have advanced derives a still stronger degree of probability from the circumstance, that the Slavonic Bible follows the Greek construction. This Bible, with slight changes and corrections produced by three or four revisions made at different periods, is that still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language of the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the Bible forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper classes—who are instructed in this dead language, precisely as an Italian must study Latin in order to read the Bible.

Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history, towers, like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid, one colossal figure—that of Vladímir Sviatoslávitch; the first to surmount the bloody splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet6 with the mildly-radiant Cross of Christ.

From the conversion to Christianity of Vladímir and his subjects—passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for about 250 years—we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century—the one the written or learned, the other the spoken language.

The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were translated: and this remained the learned or official language for a long period. In this—or in an imitation of this, effected with various degrees of success—were compiled the different collections of Monkish annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above classes7 were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of the Church and of learning.

The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue.8

It is to the reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch, who united Little Russia to Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.

The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing—if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure impeding—forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was national—that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other languages, than the production of originality in his own.

This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter's time

"A Babylonish dialect;"

the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms which might have been—have, indeed, since been—translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of translations, but very few original productions.

From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note: we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.

At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages—the Slavonic, to which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia.

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