some merit, are, Kengelatz, Magarashevitch, Julinatz, Solaritch, etc.79 Writers on different subjects of natural philosophy and medicine, are, Orphelin, Stoïkovitch, Beritch, Jankovitch, P. Hadshitch, etc. On statistics, geography, etc. the above mentioned Solaritch, Vuitch, Bulitch, Popovitch, and others. In the department of theology, we hardly meet with a single book of a doctrinal character; but there are quite a number on ethics. The principal writers of the language, therefore, may perhaps be more properly arranged under the heads of philosophy (comprehending logic), rhetoric, ethics, etc. as Obradovitch, Raitch, Lazarevitch, Vuitch, Davidovitch, Masovitch, etc.80

Poetry and belles lettres being more dependent on the state of the language than purely scientific works, we cannot proceed any further, without first making our readers acquainted with the recent innovations of a few distinguished and patriotic individuals.

It was Dositheï Obradovitch, born A. D. 1739 in the Banat of Temeswar, who first among the oriental Servians ventured to write books in the despised language of the country. The fortunes of this person are, in several respects, of uncommon interest. After twenty-five years of travelling all over Europe, he returned to his comparatively barbarous native land, where he died in 1811, as inspector of the schools, and the instructor of the children of the celebrated Kara George. He left several works. A far greater influence, however, has been exerted on Servian literature by Davidovitch and Vuk Stephanovitch Karadshitch, who have not only followed the same course, but were the first to defend both theoretically and practically the principle, that the Servians ought to write as they speak. Their boldness met with strong and decided opposition from the old school; and the contest and rivalry which have been the consequence, although tending for the present to prevent the progress of the good cause, cannot but have, ere long, beneficial results, by exciting the minds of the people to a higher activity than they have had until now occasion to exert.

79 The writings of this very productive philologist and historian are however more remarkable for boldness and singularity of assertion, than for depth. In his Rimljani slavenstvovavshii, Buda 1818, he undertakes to derive the entire Latin language from the Slavic. an earlier work, written 1809, he contends that the German language was a corruption of the Slavic dialects spoken on the Elbe, etc.

In

80 The reader will find a more complete catalogue of the Servian writers and their works, in O. v. Birch's Travels; see above, Note 73.

Davidovitch published from 1814 to 1822 a Servian newspaper in Vienna, not exclusively of a political character, by which he intended to diffuse information on various subjects; the first undertaking of the kind in his language. His influence however is not confined to the language alone; as secretary of prince Milosh, the present head of the Servians, his influence on the general cultivation of his countrymen is very decided. Vuk Stephanovitch, born 1786 in Turkish Servia, is the author of the first Oriental-Servian grammar and dictionary; and in the arrangement of the former has manifested the true spirit of a genuine grammarian. Besides these he has written several works of value, a biography of prince Milosh, a series of annuals, etc. But the best proof which he could give of the beauty, richness, and perfectibility of the vulgar Servian dialect, is his Collection of the Servian popular Songs, in three volumes, comprising nevertheless only about the fourth or fifth part of the similar treasures hidden among the mountains of his country. In making this collection, he very judiciously wrote down only those songs which he had himself caught from the lips of the Servian peasantry. There had already been a rumor among the literati of Europe for more than fifty years, of the beauty and singularity of the Illyrian national songs, founded mostly on the communications of Italian travellers and the citations of Dalmatian dictionaries. But when Vuk's collection appeared, and a part of its contents was made intelligible to the civilized world by translations, imperfect and deficient as any translation of popular poetry must necessarily ever be, the public and the critics were nevertheless alike struck with the strong expression of the high and incomparable beauties of nature. All that the other Slavic nations, or the Germans, the Scotch, and the Spaniards, possess of popular poetry, can at the utmost be compared with the lyrical part of the Servian songs, called by them female songs, because they are sung only by females and youths; but the long epic compositions, by which a peasant bard, sitting in a large circle of other peasants, in unpremeditated but perfectly regular and harmonious verse, celebrates the heroic deeds of their ancestors or cotemporaries, has no parallel in the whole history of literature since the days of Homer.81

81 The title of Vuk's collection, a part of which appeared 1814 —15 at Vienna, in two small volumes, is Narodne Srpske pjesme, Lpzg. 1823-24. Some of these remarkable songs have been made known to the English public in Bowring's Servian Popular Poetry, London 1827. This little collection contains also an able and spirited VOL. IV. No. 14.

51

The same individual published at Vienna, in 1824, the Gospel of St. Luke, as a 'Specimen of a translation of the New Testament into Servian. How much part he had in the_version printed at Leipsic by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and now circulated among the Servians, we are unable to say.*

*

introduction, which serves to give a clear view not only of the state of the Servians in particular, but also of the relation of the Slavic nations to each other in general; with the exception of some mistakes in respect to classification.-In Germany a general interest for Servian national poetry was excited by Goethe. See his Kunst und Alterthum, Vol. V. Nos. I and II. German translations are: Volkslieder der Serben, by Talvj, 2 vols. Halle 1825-26. Die Wila, by Gerhardt, 2 vols. Lpzg. 1828. These two works contain nearly all the songs published by Vuk, but only half of those he has collected. Serbische Volkslieder, by v. Goetze, St. Pet. and Lpz. 1827. Serbische Hochzeitlieder, by Eugen Wesely, 1826. A French translation of these songs does not yet exist, although they have excited a deep interest among the literati of France. The work la Guzla, published at Paris in 1827 and purporting to contain translations of Dalmatian national songs, is not genuine, but was written by the French poet Mérimée, with much talent indeed, but without any knowledge of the Servian language.

We must correct here a mistake made by Dr Henderson in his Biblical Researches, in respect to the Servian New Testament. He says, p. 263, “A version of the (Servian) New Testament was indeed executed some years ago, but its merits were not of such a description as to warrant the committee of the Russian Bible Society to carry it through the press; yet, as they were deeply convinced of the importance of the object, they were induced to engage a native Servian, of the name of Athanasius Stoikovitch to make a new translation, the printing of which was completed in the year 1825, but owing to the cessation of the Society's operations, the distribution of the copies has hitherto been retarded." Dr Henderson probably received his information at St. Petersburg, and felt himself of course entitled to depend on it, being very likely not acquainted with the great schism in modern Servian literature above mentioned. If we may confide in our own recollections, the translation, the merits of which the committee of the Russian Bible Society was so little disposed to acknowledge, was made by Vuk Stephanovitch, who knew better than any one else the wants of the Servian people, and who presented in the above mentioned Gospel of St. Luke a specimen to the learned world, which received the approbation of all those Slavic scholars entitled to judge of the subject. The committee of St. Petersburg however was probably composed of gentlemen of the opposite party; as indeed the Russian Servians are, in general, advocates of the mixed Slavo-Servian language, in which for about fifty years all books for the Servians

Modern educated Servian poets, upon whose writings the reception which the popular poetry has met with, and no doubt also their own consciousness of its power, have had a favourable influence, are the following: Lucian Mushitzky, a writer of odes and other lyrical pieces, all of them highly esteemed by his countrymen; Simo Milutinovitch, author of an epic poem entitled Serbianca, which describes the Servian war of 1812, and a writer of lyric poetry, of a tragedy, etc. J. Popovitch, Milovan Vidakovitch, M. Vitkovitch, G. Kovatzevitch, etc.*

Vuk's Grammar, printed at Vienna in 1818, before his Dictionary, has been rendered accessible to other European nations by the celebrated Grimm's translation of it, Leips. and Berl. 1824. Another Servian Grammar has recently been published in German, by Schaffarik.

were written, and which we have described above in Schaffarik's words; see p. 393. According to their ideas of the Servian language, the mere use of the common dialect of the people was sufficient to inspire doubts of the competency of the translator; although it was for the people, the unlearned, that the translation was professedly made. They engaged in consequence Professor Stoikovitch, the author of several Russian and Slavo-Servian books (see above p. 396), and who had been for more than twenty years in the Russian service, to make a new translation. This person, who, to judge from our personal acquaintance with him, probably on this occasion read the Gospels for the first time in his life with any attention, took the rejected version for his basis, altered it, according to his views of the dignity of the Servian language, into the customary mixed Slavo-Servian-Russian idiom, and received the reward from the Society. Whether this is the version afterwards printed at Leipsic and distributed in Servia by the English Bible Society, we are not informed. From private letters we know, that in the year 1827, that Society proposed to Vuk Stephanovitch to allow him £500, if after obtaining appropriate testimonies for the correctness of his version, he would print one thousand copies in Servia; and also authorized its correspondent in Constantinople, Mr Leeves, to arrange the matter finally with Vuk. From M. Kopitar's remark however, that the translation for the Dalmatian Roman Catholics needed only to be transcribed with Cyrillic letters to come into use among the Oriental Servians, we are entitled to conclude that the version now circulated, is not as it ought to be; and a correct one, for that part of the nation, is still a desideraIt would seem therefore that Vuk Stephanovitch cannot have accepted the offer in question. See Kopitar's Letter to the Editor, Bibl. Repos. Vol. III. p. 186.

tum.

* See Note 80.

(b) Bulgarians.

According to Kopitar, the eminent Slavic philologist, the Bulgarian dialect, spoken in Bulgaria and Macedonia by about half a million of the population, has of all the Slavic dialects been most affected by the course of time, both in its grammatical structure and in its whole character. It has an article, which is put after the words it qualifies, like that of the Albanians and Walachians. Of the seven Slavic cases, only the nominative and vocative remain to it; all the others being supplied through prepositions. As the Bulgarians are a mixture of Slavi, Rumeni, and Tartars, this state of their language can easily be accounted for.82 The only point of view from which it can, uncultivated as it is, excite a general interest, is in respect to their popular songs, in which this dialect likewise is exceedingly rich.

The Bulgarians were converted to Christianity by Cyril and Methodius. Their history is a series of continued warfare with the Servians, Greeks, and Hungarians, and finally with the Turks, who subdued them, and in A. D. 1392 put an end to the existence of a Bulgarian kingdom. The people had hitherto adhered to the Greek church; except for a short interval in the last half of the twelfth century, when the Roman chair succeeded in bringing them under its dominion. Since the establishment of the Turkish government, apostasy to Mohammedanism has been, of all the christian provinces of the Porte, most frequent in Bulgaria. Still, the bulk of the population has remained faithful to the Slavic Greek worship. The scanty germs of cultivation sown among them by two or three of their princes, who caused several Byzantine works to be translated into the Bulgarian dialect, perished during the Turkish invasion. The few books used by the priesthood in our days, are obtained from Russia. The Russian Bible Society had prepared a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament, intended more especially for the benefit of about 30,000 Bulgarian colonists in the Russian province of Bessarabia. But the specimen printed in 1823, excited so much doubt as to the competency of the translator in respect to his knowledge of the Bulgarian language, that it was deemed advisable to put a stop to its further progress. Among the Albanian portion of the inhabitants, the New Testament has been distributed by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

82 Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Vol. XVII.