explain away the faults of others while scourging themselves for the same.
A gang of convicts, with many a murderer and hardened criminal among them, on the foot-wearying tramp to Siberia evoke nothing but the most effusive outbursts of sympathy (often taking the material shape of donations in money, clothes, and provisions) on the part of the villagers by the road. Yet those same peasants, after committing a crime, will in most cases, under the stress of awakened conscience, rush to the market-place to make a clean breast of it before the whole community, pleading with the fellow-villagers to shower abuse and blows on them as sinners unworthy of their God's image.
But no matter how strongly marked these humane tendencies might be, they would probably remain isolated cases, if there had been no conscious striving after definite ideals, had they not been enthroned as principles that should be the beacon fights of the advanced writers among the Russians.
True, Dyerzhavin's (1743-1816) whole claim to immortality was based on being the bard of Catherine II's achievements:—
"I shall extol, I shall proclaim thee,
Through thee immortal be myself,"
but he also takes credit for
"With a smile telling the truth to Tsars."
As for Pushkin, who as a lad wrote—
"The old Dyerzhavin us has noticed,
And on the brink of grave has blessed,"
he has entirely different claims. He, whom partisans of "Art for Art's sake," "pure Art," etc., proclaimed their ideal and idol,—he will have his imperishable monument for this reason:—
"And of my people I long for this shall be beloved
That kindly feelings with my lyre I used to wake;
That by the vivid charm of verses I was useful
And mercy to the fallen I invoked."
