Russian poet, born at Voronezh, Russia, on the 26th of October 1809, of humble parentage; at sixteen, educated only in the rudiments of village-school learning, he tried his hand at writing poetry; a bookseller gave him a book on prosody, and permission to read the works of the poets in his shop. In 1831 he visited Moscow, and in 1835 published his first volume of poems, which made him famous in a year; his visit to St. Petersburg in 1836 was a triumph. His complete poems, 124 in number, are short and rough, but filled with the pathetic melancholy peculiar to the Russian peasant. He has been called the “Burns of Russia.” He died on the 12th of November 1842. See also “Song: ‘Cease thy song, nightingale’,” “The Ploughman’s Song.”
