BARATYNSKI, Jewgenij Abramovitch, a distinguished Russian poet, was born in 1792. He was educated at the royal school at St Petersburg, and then entered the army. He served for eight years in Finland, and appears to have got into disgrace on account of some foolish pranks which he had played. During these years he composed his first poem, Eva, which bears very manifest traces of his residence in Finland. Through the interest of friends he obtained leave from the Czar to retire from the army, and settled near Moscow. There, so far as his broken health would allow him, he devoted his time to poetry, and completed his chief work, The Gipsy, which has been spoken of by critics as the best poem of its kind in the Russian language, and as fully equal, if not superior, to the finest productions of Pouschkin. This was his only work cf any extent; his health gave way completely, and he died in 1844 at Naples, whither he had gone for the sake of the milder climate. A collected edition of his poems appeared at St Petersburg, in 2 vols., in 1835.