MICKIKWICZ, ADAN1, 1798-1855; b. Poland; son of a Lithuanian nobleman, who pursued unsuccessfully the profession of an advocate. Mickiewicz received his ele mentary education at the schools in Nowogrodek and Minsk, and in his eighteenth year entered- the university of Wilna, where his uncle was a professor. This university, for whose regency the poet Campbell was at one time a candidate, was then the most impor tant educational institution in Russian Poland. There Mickiewiez became acquainted with the Polish revolutionist, Thomas Zan, and joined one of the patriotic secret socie ties which Zan was forming at Wilna. He gave most of his time, while at the univer sity, to chemistry and poetry; his first published poem was addressed to Lelewel, university professor of history, and an ardent Polish patriot. After leaving Wilna, lio becaine professor of classical literature iu the college at Kowno, and it was during his residence there that two volumes of his poems were published, in 1822. Like Byron, Miekiewiez "woke up to tind himself famous." The poems in these two volumes, though of varying degrees of merit, at once gave their author a reputation superior to that of any native poet. Many of them are founded on old Lithuanian superstitions and folk-songs. Two longer poems are contained in this collection: one of them, Grazzna, tells how a Lithuanian princess, for her husband's honor, dies, in his armor, upon the field. The other, Dziady, or The Ancestors, is a sort of autobiographical drama of marked power. Dmochowski, the translator of Homer, attacked him for his romanticism ; but a .new school of rising poets gathered round him, and became known as the " School of 3lickiewicz." His popularity with his countrymen was raised to an unbounded pitch by his imprisonment by the Russian authorities on account of his connection with the Polish secret societies. His friend Zan was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; and Mickie wicz was condemned to perpetual banishment in Russia. He resided at first in St. Petersburg.. where he made the acquaintance of Pushkin and other literary men. His intimacy, with Pushkin excited the suspicions of the Russian government, which forced hint to remove to Odessa. He traveled through the Crimea, and records his impressions in the Crimean Sonnets. These sonnets became very popular, perhaps as being the first written in Polish; but they are inferior to most of his other work. -He lived for a time in the household of prince Galitzin, the governor of Moscow; but was soon allowed to remove to St. Petersburg. There, in 1828, lie published Conrad TVallenrod, which, though having a distinct political animus, escaped the Russian censorship. It relates Ono story of a Lithuanian, who rose, in the 14th c., to the mastership of the order of Teutonic knights, enemies of Lithuania, solely to have a better opportunity to destroy them. The intention of the poem was clear to the Poles, but was lost upon the Russians. The work was translated into Russian, and the emperor Nicholas complimented its author. It is said that he was even offered a post in the Russian service, but he declined, and requested to be given permission to visit Italy for his health. His request was granted, through the good offices of the Russian poet Zhukovsky, and he started for Italy,by way of Germany, where he met Goethe. He took up his residence in Rome, where Ile became an intimate
friend of James Fenimore Cooper. At Rome he heard of the Polish uprising of 1830, which the insurgents at Warsaw began by singing some parts of his Odeto Youth. He had gone as far as Posen, on his way to participate in the insurrection, when the news came. that it was quelled. He went to Dresden, where he wrote a second part of Dziady. which appeared at Paris in 1832. This second part is likewise autobiographical, and gives an account of the poet's imprisonment at Wilna. He here represents himself in a scene which has been pronounced worthy of Goethe, as possessed by the devil, who driven out from him by a priest. His last work of any length was a poem called Pan Tadeusz, or Sir Thaddeus, which appeared in 1834. It is entirely different in charactei and construction from the poet's other works. It deals with Lithuanian domestic life, at the time of the approach of Napoleon's army in the campaign of 1812. Two year\ before the publication of Pan Tadeusz he wrote an absurd and eccentric work called A Book of the Polish Nation and the Polish Pilgrimage. In this book he attributes all the calamities which have fallen upon Poland to its toleration of Protestantism. Count Montalembert translated the book into French, on account of the warmth of its Roman Catholicism. He was married at Paris, in 1834, to a Polish lady named Celina Szyman owska, to whomisome of his earlier verses are addressed. In 1839 he became professei of classical literature at Lausanne, and the next year he was called to the newly estab lished chair of the Slavonic lanomages antl literature in the college of France. flis firs% lectures were successful; but he soon began to display a peculia-r fanaticism. A Polls}, impostor, named Towianski, who had cured Mme. Mickiewicz by mesmerism in lt341 pretended to have revelations from the Virgin Mary, and these were interpreted by Mickiewicz. The latter finally ceased to allude to Slavonic litemture at all in his lee tures, but extolled Towianski as the new _Messiah, and preached the worship of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1844 the French government put a stop to the lectures, and ordered Towianski out of Paris. Mickiewicz's name, however, was not expunged from the list of professors. In 1848, after the February revolution, lie went to Italy, in the vain hop4 of inducing the pope to do something in behalf of Poland. At th4 beginning of tAil 0:iinean war he presented the cause of Poland to Louis Napoleon, who sent him on a mission to the east in 1855; and lie died at Constantinople. The best edition of his works was published at Paris in 1844, edited, under his own supervision, by Alexander Chodzke. The Polish Pilgrimage was translated into English by Lach Szyrma, and the Wallenrod by- Leon Jablonski. A poetical version of the laIter work, by Cattley, appeared at London in 1840. Mickiewicz stands at the head of the literature of his own 'country, and his position in the general literature of Europe is high. No poet of this century, except Byron, to whom he has often been couipared, has left more original poetical work of undoubted intellectual power and imagination; but the prose writings of Mickiewicz are, for the most part, extravagant and feeble.