at Königsberg. Aragel, according to Schlözer, in his “Geschichte von Litthauen”, is the Germanised name of the Lithuanian province Aragola, or Aragallen, and the waste of Grauden is the district on the Niemen, north-west of Grodno, which city is well known to lie on the Niemen, and at that time was well built. The country lying thence north-west towards the Prussian boundary is still little known in our times, and might easily have been designated a waste by Suchenwirt. Such an expedition, from Insterburg through Samogitia to the district of Novogrodock, and from thence to the Niemen through Grodno, back to the Prussian boundary, could be well accomplished in a short time.
Finally, the observation has still to be made, that Suchenwirt appears to have known the diversity of the Russian countries mentioned by him. The most remote north-eastern Russia to which the Livonian expedition went, he calls White Russia (Weizzen Reuzzen). Isborsk lies in White Russia (s. xviii, v. 205 and 506). The Russian districts, which in a strict sense form the frontier of Lithuania, he calls Russenia, or Russein (s. vi, v. 362 and 429); they comprise the territories subsequently called Black Russia. Red Russia, on the other hand, or those Russian districts which first came under Polish rule, which lay nearest to our poet’s description, and hence the best known to him, he simply calls Russia (Reuzzen).[1]
- ↑ The following note, bearing reference to this narrative, is given by Price in his edition of Warton’s “History of English Poetry,”
