17 MARCH 1900, Page 11

A CAUCASIAN MAN OF LETTERS.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Englishmen who know something of the Caucasus and its inhabitants will be grieved to hear of the death of Giorgi Tsereteli. He died at the age of fifty-eight at Tiflis on January 27th last. He was a man of great literary activity, a writer for the Press, a satirical novelist, and a poet dis- tinguished even in Georgia, a country that teems with poets. He was educated at St Petersburg, and afterwards studied in Munich, Zurich, and Geneva. The great work of his life was to familiarise his countrymen with Western ideas, and teach a nation essentially feudal and lyrical in its concep- tions to adapt itself by strenuous effort to the tone of the modern world. His interest in the history and archmology of his country was a marked feature of his life, and he was a convinced adherent of the progress that proceeds by develop- ment rather than revolution.—I am, Sir, &c., R. E. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.