Poet and translator Nikolai Ivanovich Gnedich (1784-1833), the famous creator of the Russian Iliad, a close friend of I.A. Krylov and A.S. Pushkin, began as a prose writer and playwright. In his early, student bench times, works inspired by Schiller's work, German robber novels, the first translations of English "Gothic" and French alterations of Shakespeare, are already traced, albeit "through a dim glass," the emerging genius of Russian literature.