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