POUND, an enclosure in which cattle or other animals found straying are retained until they are redeemed by the owners, or when taken in distraint until replevined, such retention being in the nature of a pledge or security to compel the performance of satisfaction for debt or damage done. A pound belongs to the township or village and should be kept in repair by the parish. The pound-keeper is obliged to receive everything offered to his custody and is not answerable if the thing offered be illegally impounded. By the statute 1 and 2 Phil. and Mary c. 12 (1554), no distress of cattle can be driven out of the hundred where taken unless to a pound within 3 miles of the place of seizure. Where cattle are impounded the impounder is bound to supply them with sufficient food and water (12 and 13 Vict. c. 92, and 17 and 18 Vict. c. 60); any person, moreover, is authorized to enter a place where animals are impounded without food and water more than twelve hours and supply them without being liable to an action for such entry, and the cost of such food is to be paid by the owner of the animal before it is removed. The statute 2 Will. and Mary, sess. 1 c. 5 (1690), gives treble damages and costs against persons guilty of pound breach; and by 6 and 7 Vict. c. 30 (1843) persons releasing or attempting to release cattle impounded or damaging any pound are liable to a fine not exceeding £5, awardable to the person on whose behalf the cattle were distrained, with imprisonment with hard labour not exceeding three months in default. In the old law books a distinction is drawn between a common pound, an open pound, and a close pound; these terms have now, however, lost much of, if not all, their significance. By statute 11 Geo. II. c. 19 (1738), which was passed for the benefit of landlords, any person distraining for rent may turn any part of the premises upon which a distress is taken into a pound pro hac vice for securing of such distress.
POUSHKIN, Alexander (1799-1837), the most celebrated of Russian poets, was born at Moscow, 7th June 1799. He belonged to an ancient family of boyars, and in a clever poem, many of the sallies of which were too trenchant to pass the censorship, he has sketched some of the more important of his progenitors. A strange ancestor was his maternal great-grandfather, a favourite Negro ennobled by Peter the Great, who bequeathed to him the curly hair of his race and a somewhat darker complexion than falls to the lot of the ordinary Russian.
In 1811 the poet entered the newly-founded lyceum of Tzarskoe Selo, situated near St Petersburg. To his stay in this college Poushkin has alluded in many of his poems. On quitting the lyceum in 1817 he was attached to the ministry of foreign affairs, and in this year he began the composition of his Ruslan and Ly'udmila, a poem which was completed in 1820. The scene is laid at Kieff, in the time of Vladimir, the “bright sun” of the old Russian legends. Meanwhile Poushkin mixed in all the gayest society of the capital, and it seemed as if he would turn out a mere man of fashion instead of a poet. But an event occurred which, however disastrous it might appear to him at first sight, was fraught with the happiest consequences to his muse. A very daring Ode to Liberty written by him had been circulated in manuscript in St Petersburg. This production having been brought to the notice of the governor, the young author only escaped a journey to Siberia by accepting an official position at Kishineff in Bessarabia, in southern Russia. Here he found himself surrounded by a world of new associations. If we follow the chronological order of his poems, we can trace with what enthusiasm he greeted the ever-changing prospects of the sea and the regions of the Danube and the Crimea. In some elegant lines he sang the Fountain of Bakhchisarai, the old palace of the khans near Simpheropol. This fountain and the legend connected with it he afterwards made the subject of a longer poem.
At this time Poushkin was, or affected to be, overpowered by the Byronic “Weltschmerz.” Having visited the baths of the Caucasus for the re-establishment of his health in 1822, he felt the inspiration of its magnificent scenery, and composed his next production of any considerable length, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, narrating the story of the love of a Circassian girl for a youthful Russian officer who has been taken prisoner. This was followed by the Fountain of Bakhchisarai, which tells of the detention of a young Polish captive, a Countess Potocka, in the palace of the khans of the Crimea. About the same time he composed some interesting lines on Ovid, whose place of banishment, Tomi, was not far distant. To this period belongs also the Ode to Napoleon, which is far inferior to the fine poems of Byron and Manzoni, or indeed of Lermontoff, on the same subject. In the Lay concerning the Wise Oleg we see how the influence of Karamzin's History had led the Russians to take a greater interest in the early records of their country. The next long poem was the Gipsies (Tzuigani), an Oriental tale of love and vengeance, in which Poushkin has admirably delineated these nomads, whose strange mode of life fascinated him. During his stay in southern Russia he allowed himself to get mixed up with the secret societies then rife throughout the country. He also became embroiled with his chief, Count Vorontzoff, who sent him to report upon the damages which had been committed by locusts in the southern part of Bessarabia. Poushkin took this as a premeditated insult, and sent in his resignation; and Count Vorontzoff in his official report requested the Government to remove the poet, “as he was surrounded by a society of political and literary fanatics, whose praises might turn his head and make him believe that he was a great writer, whereas he was only a feeble imitator of Lord Byron, an original not much to be commended.” The poet quitted Odessa in 1824, and on leaving wrote a fine Ode to the Sea. Before the close of the year he had returned to his father's seat at Mikhailovskoe, near Pskoff, where he soon became embroiled with his relatives, but grew more at ease when the veteran, who led the life of reckless expenditure of the old-fashioned Russian boyar, betook himself to the capital. The father survived his celebrated son, and it was to him that Zhukovski addressed a pathetic letter, giving him an account of his death. His mother died a year before her son; and Poushkin, when choosing a burial-place for her, marked out a spot for himself and expressed a presentiment that he had not long to live. He had now involved himself in trouble on all sides; for so obnoxious had he become to the authorities even during his retreat in the country that he was put under the supervision of the governor, the marshal of the nobility, and the archimandrite of the neighbouring monastery of Svyatogorski. In his retirement he devoted a great deal of time to the study of the old Russian popular poetry, the builinas, of which he became a great admirer. Recollections of Byron and Andre Chenier gave the inspiration to some fine lines consecrated to the latter, in which Poushkin appeared more conservative than was his wont, and wrote in a spirit antagonistic to the French Revolution. In 1825 he published his tragedy Boris Godunoff, a bold effort to imitate the style of Shakespeare. Up to this time the traditions of the Russian stage, such as it was, had been French. Plays of all kinds had appeared, translations of Molière, Corneille, and Racine, or adaptations of them, and even glimpses of Shakespeare conveyed through the medium of the paltry versions of Ducis.
