About the same time, Leont. Magnitzky wrote the first Russian
Arithmetic with Arabic numerals.
Among the lyric poets two Kozaks, Cyril Danilof and Semen Klimofsky,
are named with some distinction. The first of the two, better known
under the diminutive of his name, _Kirsha_ Danilof, deserves
particular attention. The Russians have their cyclus of heroic
legends, as well as the occidental nations. Vladimir and his Boyars
are to them what Arthur and his Round table, Charlemagne and his
twelve peers, are to Britons, Franks, and Germans. These traditions
lived still among the people in Kirsha Danilof's time; and yet live to
some extent as nursery tales. Kirsha versified them; and, we fear,
changed them according to the spirit of his time. They have only been
printed and published in the present century, at least seventy-five
years after they were written; for Kirsha was a cotemporary of Peter
I. It is no doubt to him, that we owe their preservation through an
age of a false and pedantic taste, which could only have despised
these relics of barbarism, and during which they were forgotten by the
Frenchified literati.[21] In historical contributions this period is
not wholly poor; but as the writers paid not the slightest attention
to style, or did not know from what principles to begin, the language
remained entirely uncultivated.
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