Chapter XIII: Epilogue (8)

Upon his return, Lomonósov became attached to the University, which was mainly filled with German professors. His own unamiable temper, combined with the not more amiable characters of German colleagues, was the cause of endless quarrels and exasperations. Under the most depressing difficulties, Lomonósov, the first learned Russian, developed a prodigious activity. He perfected the Russian literary language, lectured on rhetoric and the sciences and wrote text-books, odes and dramas. For a century he passed in Russia as a great poet, and his deserts in other directions were disregarded. But a more sober criticism sees now in Lomonósov a great scientist who has increased knowledge by several discoveries, and only a second-rate poet. Only where he described phenomena of nature or scientific facts, did he become really inspired, and write poems that have survived him. His services to the Russian language and literature are many. He did for them what Peter the Great did for the State: by his own mighty personality and example be put them on the road which they have never abandoned, and though lacking originality, the school of Lomonósov itself survived in Russian literature to the end of the eighteenth century.

But few of Lomonósov’s poems have been translated into English. _Ode from Job_, _Morning Meditations_, _Evening Meditations_, are given in Sir John Bowring’s _Specimens of the Russian Poets_, Part II.; the _Evening Meditations_, in another version, is also given by him in