At the end of Nabokov's Razgovor ("The
Conversation," a poem, 1928, that imitates Pushkin's, Lermontov's and
Nekrasov's conversations in iambic tetrameter between writers/poets,
critics and booksellers), izdatel' (editor)
mentions N. I. Grech (a prominent journalist of Pushkin's time, co-editor
of "The Northern Bee" and other periodicals, 1787-1867):
Сто лет назад целковых двести
вам дал бы Греч
за разговор,
такой по-новому проворный,
за ямб
искусно-разговорный...
Увы: он устарел с тех пор.
In a letter of January 24, 1822, to his brother Lev from
Kishinev Pushkin calls Grech "a bearded connoiseur of bookish intelligence" with
whom he (Pushkin) would bargain hard:
Къ тому-же ни Гнѣдичь со мной ни я
съ Гнѣдичемъ не будемъ торговаться и слишкомъ наблюдать каждый свою выгоду а съ
Гречемъ я сталъ бы безсовѣстно торговаться какъ со всякимъ брадатымъ цѣнителемъ
книжнаго ума
Alexey Sklyarenko