Specimens of the Russian Poets,

John Bowring's Russian Anthology opens a window onto a rising national literature, pairing translations of Russian verse with a learned survey of the language, its history, and its cultural ambition. Bowring traces Russian poetry from Lomonosov, the "father" of Russian verse, through Sumarokov, Derzhavin, Bogdanovich, Karamsin, Krĭlov, Zhukovskij, and Batiushkov, praising Derzhavin's sublime imagination, Krĭlov's original fables, and Zhukovskij's refined European translations. He also reflects on the difficulty of rendering Russian into English, striving to preserve meter, spirit, and musical force while explaining pronunciation, spelling, and the language's remarkable flexibility. Alongside this critical framework, the anthology presents lyrical and philosophical poems that move from love and longing to awe before God and nature. Derzhavin's "God" and Lomonosov's "Evening Reflections" meditate on human smallness before creation's vastness, while "The Mariner" becomes a spiritual allegory of rescue and hope. Later scenes turn romantic and tragic: in "Æolus's Harp," ancestral glory, music, and rank collide with forbidden love, and in the moonlit farewell of Milvana and her minstrel, tenderness gives way to loss. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.