tant Slovaks being comparatively small, this institution was not sustained longer than ten years. The names of the principal Slovakish-Bohemian writers during this and the last century, have been given above.47 We add here those of Bartholomaeides, Tablic, Lowich, and Moschotzy, themselves writers of merit, or promoters of literature and science.

Many among the Slovaks, like their brethren the Madjares, have received a German education; and some indeed have advanced far enough to have that language at command. For the sake of more fame or a larger field of influence, they mostly prefer to write in German. Of these we adduce here only the author of the History of the Slavic Language and Literature, so often cited in our pages, Schaffarik, professor at Neusatz; who in choosing the German language as his vehicle, has only followed the example of the two greatest Slavic authorities, Dobrovsky and Kopitar.* His work, however, although in other respects justly considered as a valuable contribution to German literature, has contributed more than all others to a knowledge of the Slavic literature in general, and of the classification and mutual relations of the Slavic languages.48

III. History of the Polish Language and Literature.

The regions of the Baltic and Vistula, after the Goths and Vandals had finally left them, were occupied, towards the fourth century, by the Lettonians and Lithuanians, who are according to some historians Slavic, and according to others Finnic-Scythic tribes.49 Other parts of the country were inhabited by the An

lated the Scriptures into the Slovakian dialect. Professor P. published a Bohemian dictionary, see pp. 462, 464. Canon P. the fourth volume of Bernolak's Slovakian lexicon, as said in the text above.

47 See p. 458, 462.

* See more in the Appendix.

48 There does not yet exist a philological work, from which a complete knowledge of the Slovakian language in its different dialects could be obtained. The following works of Bernolak regard chiefly the Slovakish-Moravian dialect: Grammatica Slavica, Posonii 1790. Dissertatio de literis Slavorum, Posonii 1783. Etymologia vocum Slavicarum, Tyrnau 1791. Lexicon Slav. Lat. Germ. Hung. Buda 1825.

49 See above, p. 334. On the origin of these tribes, which seem to have been kindred nations with the ancient Livonians, Esthonians, and

tes and Lygians, nations of the Slavic race, who at the general migration of nations turned themselves, the latter towards the west, and the former southwards, where they settled in Walachia. All these tribes and many more were by the ancients comprised under the name of Sarmatae. In the sixth, or according to others, in the seventh century, the Lekhes, a people kindred to the Tchekhes, who were urged forwards by the Bulgarians, settled on the banks of the Vistula and Varta. Lekh (Lech, Ljach) signified in old Bohemian a free and noble man, and had this meaning still in the fourteenth century. The Lekhes were divided into several tribes, of which, according to Nestor, at first only those who settled on the vast plains, polie, of the Ukraine, were called Polyane, Poles, i. e. inhabitants of the plain. The tribes which occupied Masovia were called Masowshane; the Lekhes who went to Pomerania, Pomoriane, etc. The specific name of Poles, as applied to all the Lekhish tribes together, does not appear until the close of the tenth century, when the generic appellation of Lekhes or Ljaches had perished. In the year 840, the chiefs of the different tribes united themselves under one common head; at that time they are said to have chosen a husbandman by the name of Pjast for their duke, and the male descendants of this, their first prince, lived and reigned not less than six hundred and thirty years. From Germany and Bohemia Christianity was carried to Poland by catholic priests, probably as early as the ninth century. In the beginning of the tenth, some attempts were made to introduce the Slavic liturgy into Poland. Both species of worship existed for some time peacefully side by side; and even when through the exertions of the Latin priesthood, the Slavic liturgy was gradually superseded by the occidental rites, the former was at least tolerated; and after the invention of printing, the Polish city of Cracow was the first place where books in the Old Slavic dialect, and portions of the Old Slavic Bible, were printed.50

Borussians, many hypotheses have been started, but the truth has not yet been sufficiently ascertained. It is at least evident that they are not of Slavic origin, although even this has been maintained by many historians, who were misled by local circumstances. See Parrot's Versuch einer Entwickelung der Sprache, Abstammung, etc. der Liven, Letten, etc. The Foreign Quarterly Review contains an interesting essay on Lettish popular poetry, Vol. VIII. p. 61.

50 See p. 352, 356.

In the year 965, the duke Miecislav married the Bohemian princess Dombrovka, and caused himself to be baptized. From that time onward, all the Polish princes and the greatest part of the nation became Christians. There is however not one among the Slavic nations, in which the influence Christianity must necessarily have exerted on its mental cultivation, is so little visible; while upon its language it exerted none at all. It has ever been and is still a favourite opinion of some Slavic philologists, that several of the Slavic nations must have possessed the art of writing long before their acquaintance with the Latin alphabet, or the invention of the Cyrillic system; and among the arguments by which they maintain this view, there are indeed some too striking to be wholly set aside.51 But neither from those early times, nor from the four or five centuries after the introduction of Christianity, does there remain any monument whatever of the Polish language; nay, with the exception of a few fragments without value, the most ancient document of that language extant, is not older than the sixteenth century. Until that time the Latin idiom reigned exclusively in Poland. The teachers of Christianity in this country were for nearly five centuries foreigners, viz. Germans and Italians. Hence arose that unnatural neglect of the vernacular tongue, of which these were ignorant ; the private influence of the German, still visible in the Polish language; and the unlimited dominion of the Latin. Slavic, Polish, and heathenish, were to them synonymous words. Thus, whilst the light of Christianity everywhere carried the first dawn of life into the night of Slavic antiquity; the early history of Poland affords more than any other part of the christian world a melancholy proof, how the passions and blindness of men operated to counterbalance that holy influence. But although so unfavourably disposed towards the language, it cannot be said that the influence of the foreign clergy was in other respects injurious to the literary cultivation of the country. Benedictine monks founded in the beginning of the eleventh century the first Polish schools; and numerous convents of their own and other orders presented to the scholar an asylum, both when in the year 1241 the Mongols broke into the country, and also during the civil wars which were caused by the family dissensions of Pjast's successors. Several chronicles in Latin were written by Poles long before the history of the Polish literature begins, and Polish no

blemen went to Paris, Bologna, and Prague, to study sciences, for the very elements of which their own language afforded them no means.

Polish writers are in the habit of dividing the history of their language into five periods.52 The first extends from the introduction of Christianity to Casimir the Great, A. D. 1333.

The second period extends from A. D. 1333 to A. D. 1506, or the reign of Siegmund I.

The third period is the golden age of the Polish literature, and closes with the foundation of schools of the Jesuits, A. D. 1622. The fourth period comprises the time of the preponderance of the Jesuits, and ends with the revival of literature by Konarski, A. D. 1760.

The fifth period comprehends the interval from A. D. 1760 to the present time.

Before we enter into a regular historical account of these different periods, we will devote a few words to the formation and the character of the language itself.

The extent of country in which the Polish language is predominant, is much smaller than would naturally be concluded from the great circuit of territory, which at the time of its power and independence, was comprised under the kingdom of Poland. We do not allude to the sixteenth century, when Poland was the most powerful state in the north; when the Teutonic knights, the conquerers of Prussia, were compelled to acknowledge its protection; and when not only were Livonia and Courland, the one a component part of the Polish kingdom, and the other a Polish fief, but even the ancient Smolensk and the venerable Kief, the royal seat of Vladimir, and the Russian provinces adjacent to Galicia, all belonged to Poland. We speak of this kingdom as it was at the time of its first partition between Russia Austria, and Prussia. Of the four or five millions of inhabitants in the provinces united with Russia at the three successive partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, only one and a half million are Poles, and speak dialects of that language ;53 in White and Black

52 See Bentkowski's Hist. literatury Polsk. Warsaw 1814, Vol. I. pp. 162-176.

53 The statistical information respecting the Russian-Polish provinces is very imperfect, and contaius the most striking contradictions. Benken gives the number of inhabitants at four millions'; Wiehmann in 1813, at 6,380,000; Arsenjef at seven millions. According to Bröm

Russia, the Russniaks are by far more numerous; and in Lithuania the Lithuanians. Besides the independent language of these latter, the Malo Russian and White Russian dialects are spoken in these provinces; and all documents of the grand-duchy of Lithuania before it was united with Poland in A. D. 1569, were written in the latter.5

54

The Polish language is farther spoken (1) by the inhabitants of the kingdom of Poland formed in 1815, three and a half millions in number, or reckoned together with the Poles of the Polish-Russian provinces, five millions; (2) by the inhabitants of Galicia, belonging to Austria, and the Poles in the Austrian part of Silesia, about three millions; (3) by the inhabitants of the small republic of Cracow, about one hundred thousand; and (4) by the inhabitants of the Prussian grand-duchy of Posen, and a part of the province called Western Prussia, together with the Poles in Silesia and the Kassubes in Pomerania; in all less than two millions.55

Thus the Polish language is spoken by a population of about ten millions. Like all living languages, it has different dialects, and is in one place spoken with greater purity than in another. As these varieties, however, are neither very striking nor have ever had an influence on literature, they do not concern us here.

The ancient Polish language seems to have been very nearly related to the dialects of the Tchekhes and the Sorabian Vendes. Although very little is known in respect to the circumstances and progress of the formation of the language into its present state, it is sufficiently obvious, that it has been developed from the conflict of its natural elements with the Latin and German idioms. Of the other Slavic dialects, the Bohemian is the only one which has exerted any influence upon the Polish

sen's Russland und das rüssische Reich, Berl. 1819, there are not more than 850,000 Poles among them, nearly all noblemen; the lower classes are Russniaks and Lithuanians. In our statement of the number of Poles in these provinces, we have followed Schaffarik.

54 See. p. 361.

55 These statements seem to disagree with those of Hassel, which rest on the authority of the returns of 1820. He states that Austrian Poland has 4,226,969 inhabitants; Prussian Poland, 2,584,124. The population of the former consists however of a large proportion of Russniaks, and more especially of Jews; the latter has a similar proportion of German inhabitants.