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Since 1549 they have been under the protection of Russia, and have rendered great service to the empire. Russian troops have frequently been ordered to exterminate them. During the last years of Ivan IV these Cossacks entered upon that eastern conquest which led to Russian expansion into Asia. Karamzin, the Russian historian, is the most eminent authority on this subject.
During the intervals when I was alone I devoted myself to reading sometimes Russian history and sometimes works of fiction. The history was that of Karamzin, who may fairly be called the Russian Livy. It interested me much by the facts which it contained, but irritated me not a little by the rhetorical style in which it is written.
Already the great Russian historian Karamzin had declared that henceforth Clio must be silent or accord to Russia a prominent place in the history of the nations. Now, by the Hegelian theory, the whole of the Slav race was left out in the cold, with no high mission, with no new truths to divulge, with nothing better to do, in fact, than to imitate the Germans.
For a time the public would read nothing but absurd productions of this sort, and Karamzin, the great literary authority of the time, expressly declared that the true function of Art was "to disseminate agreeable impressions in the region of the sentimental." The love of French philosophy vanished as suddenly as the inordinate admiration of the French pseudo-classical literature.
Karamzin was followed by Nicholas Polevoi, son of a Siberian merchant, who hardly left any species of literature untouched. His History of the Russian People, however, did not add to his reputation, and is now almost forgotten. In later times both these authors have been eclipsed by such writers as Soloviev and Kostomarov.
'Karamzin. 'What, are you taking up Russian literature?... She suddenly cut me short. 'Tell me, haven't you come from Andrei? That name, that trembling, questioning voice, the half-joyful, half-timid expression of her face, all these unmistakable signs of persistent love, pierced to my heart like arrows.
I must nevertheless point out that our profession very closely approaches the idea of that which is called art. Into it enter all the elements which go to form art vocation, inspiration, fantasy, inventiveness, ambition, and a long and arduous apprenticeship to the science. From it is absent virtue alone, concerning which the great Karamzin wrote with such stupendous and fiery fascination.
'Why, is life so sweet, then? Even your friend Vladimir Nikolaitch, I may say, I've come to love from being wretched and dull: and then Paramon Semyonitch with his offers of marriage.... Punin, though he bores me with his verses, he doesn't scare me, anyway; he doesn't make me read Karamzin in the evenings, when my head's ready to drop off my shoulders for weariness!
For instance, one of them made a regular practice of reading Karamzin, another of conning the Moscow Gazette, and a third of never looking at a book at all.
In Nicholas Karamzin appeared the first Russian historian who can properly claim the title. His poems are almost forgotten: here and there we come upon a solitary lyric in a book of extracts. His History of the Russian Empire, however, is a work of extensive research, and must always be quoted with respect by Sclavonic scholars. Unfortunately, it only extends to the election of Michael Romanov.
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