These Scandinavians were by the Finns called Ruotzi, an appellation which in their language signifies strangers.  This name, in a somewhat altered form, passed over to the inhabitants of the acquired territory, with whom the conquerors soon amalgamated.  Rurik founded thus the first Slavo-Russian state; and his followers, long accustomed to a warlike nomadic mode of life, settled down among the Slavic inhabitants of the country.  The nationality of the strangers, comparatively few in number, was merged in that of the natives; but still, in one respect, it exercised a strong influence upon the latter, by infusing into them the warlike spirit of the former.  It is only since that time, that we find the Slavi as conquerors.  Their empire rapidly extended in the course of the following hundred and fifty years, and their power and external influence also rose; while at the same time the ancient civil institutions of the native Slavi were respected and improved.

In the beginning of the eleventh century, Jaroslav, the son of Vladimir the Great, imitating his father’s example, divided on his death-bed his empire among his sons, and thus sowed the seeds of dissension, anarchy, and bloody wars; a case repeated so often in ancient history, that it seems to be one of the few from which modern princes have derived a serious lesson.  The Mongols broke into the country; easily subdued the Russians thus torn by internal dissensions; succeeded, A.D. 1237, in making them tributary; and kept them for two hundred years in the most dishonourable bondage.  During this long period, every germ of literary cultivation perished.  In the middle of the fifteenth century, Ivan Vasilievitch III, [1] delivered his country from the Asiatic barbarians, then weakened by domestic dissensions; conquered his Russian rivals; and united Novogorod with his own princedom of Moscow.  From that period the power and physical welfare of Russia have increased without interruption to the present time.  The literary cultivation of its inhabitants has likewise advanced; at first indeed with stops hardly proportioned to the external progress of the empire; but now for more than a century, in consequence of the despotic activity of their sovereigns, with a wonderful rapidity.

The history of Russian literature has five distinct periods.  The first period comprises an interval of more than nine centuries, from the date of our first knowledge of the Russian Slavi, to the coming of age of Peter the Great.  A.D. 1689.  This period would easily admit of several subdivisions; and did we pretend in these pages to give the reader more than a sketch of literary history, we should perhaps find it advisable to adopt them.  This long period, however, both in a comparative and an absolute sense, is so very poor, that, limited as we are, a few words will suffice to give a general survey of it; and so much the more, because the productions of this period are closely connected with the history of the Old Slavic language, and have mostly been already mentioned under that head.