Vasili Zhukoffski, a Russian poet, born in 1783, died in Baden-Baden, April 24, 1852. He studied in Moscow, and in 1808-9 edited the Viestnik Evropi ("European Messenger"), then the leading periodical in Russia. In 1812 he fought against Napoleon, and wrote stirring war songs and a great national hymn. He afterward gave lessons in Russian literature to the future wife of Nicholas, from 1824 to 1848 was tutor to the grand duke, the present emperor Alexander II., and subsequently resided in Germany. He was the founder of a romantic school, and the first Russian poet to compose ballads, the best being Szietlana, and to introduce the iambic metre. He also wrote tales, the finest of which is Marina roshtcha (" Mary's Grove "), and translated Gray's " Elegy," Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," ballads of Goethe and Uhland, and Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans; his masterpiece is Liudmila, a version of Burger's Leonore. Several of his pieces are contained in Sir John Bowring's "Specimens of the Russian Poets" (1824). His works have been collected in 10 volumes (St. Petersburg, 1849-'50).