ART. PAGE VIII. RUSSIAN LITERATURE, . . . . . . . . . . . . Authors, by Dr. FRIEDRICH OTTO. Translated by the late GEORGE Cox, M.A. Emile DUPRE DE SAINT MAURE. Slavic Nations. By TALVI. With a Preface by Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . X. APPENDIX--- ISSURANCE, Good, BAD, AND INDIFFERENT, . . 397 THE NATIONAL QUARTERLY REVIEW. NO. XLVII. DECEMBER, 1871. ART. I.-1. Geschichte der Böhmischen Sprache und alten Lite ratur. (History of the Bohemian Language and Literature.) Von Jos. DOBROWSKY. Prag. 2. Geschichte der Slavischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten. (History of the Slavic Literature &c.) Von PAUL JOSEPH SCHAFFARIK. Ofen. 3. Historie Literatury Ceské áneb sastauwny prehled spisu Ces kyck, s Krátkau Historij Narodu, Oswicenj a Gazyka. Pracj JOSEFA JUNGMANNA, Dóktora Filosofie a Professora Humanitnjho. W. Praze. (History of Bohemian Literature, &c. By Dr. JOSEPH JUNGMANN. Prague, 1825). A ROMANTIC interest attaches to the mountain-circled region known to us as Bobemia. Politically, this country has undergone many vicissitudes, and the names of such famous men as John Huss, Jerome of Prague, and John Zizka, will keep the memory of their land fresh in all men's recollection. While they were a nation, this people possessed a literature as unique and romantic as the country where it had birth. The efforts of the Austrian conquerors, especially of Joseph II., to crush out the national feeling and to cause the language to fall into desuetude, produced its effect upon the literature of the land, and in mod VOL. XXIV.-NO. XLVII. ern times the Bohemians can show little that promises a revival of their former excellence in letters. * Of the Slavonian dialects the Bohemian, or Cechian, was the first which was moulded into a grammatical form, and more than any other language of its class does it resemble the German. As a distinct dialect it has been traced to the sixth century. The old Bohemian alphabet consisted of forty-two letters; the church Slavonian of forty-six. The Bohemians, when striving to perfect their native tongue, adopted the Roman characters, which compels the use of many accent marks to represent the peculiar sounds of the language, and requires a col. location of consonants which looks more harsh than is war. ranted by the nature of the speech itself—some words appearing, indeed, to those unacquainted with the principles of Slavonian pronunciation, absolutely unutterable. It is to be regretted that the study of the Latin caused this change of the written characters, as the original alphabet much more plainly represented the sounds of the language than do the combinations of impossible consonants, and the liberal supply of accents which now make the printed page appear such a barbarous jargon. The origin of the Bohemian tongue has not yet been discovered. It contains a number of Sanskrit roots and words, and among the peasantry still exist old rites and myths of unquestionable pagan origin. Some contend that the Slavic languages are not of Sanskrit, but of Greek origin.t The Bohemian tongue has a perfection of tenses which is in some respects even superior to that of the classic languages in nicety of expression. It resembles in its construction the Latin, and also bears some analogy to the Greek. In it the classic metres can be reproduced with considerable nicety, though the tendency to accent the first syllable of every word causes some difficulty. It owes much to the German, and has some Teutonic peculiarities. This language can hardly * Kollar thus divides the periods of European letters: "Slavonian dawn, German day, English mid-day, French afternoon, Spanish night.” + See Dankovsky, Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven. “Of three sisters, one kept faithful to her mother tongue—the Slavic language; the second gave to that common heritage the highest cultivation—the Greek language; the third mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom the Latin language.” be called a euphonious one, though the natives adapt their ballads readily to music of which they are very fond. * Of the early history of the Slavic nations we have no definite accounts. The most ancient historians speak of the several tribes as speaking different dialects. They have been variously classified, but in modern times are divided by Dobrowsky and others into north-western and south-eastern stems, having reference to their origin. The various branches of these existing at the present day are the Russian, the Illyrico-Servian, the Bulgarian, the Czekho-Slovakian, the Polish or Leckian, and the Sorabian-Vendish. There are also a number of tribes scattered through Germany, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and other parts of Turkey. The southern Slavi were neighbors of the Greeks and in constant intercourse with them, and it is highly probable that their language and the germs of their literature were affected by this contact. A Celtic race, known as the Boii, inhabited Bohemia until the sixth century; hence the name, originally Boiohemum, home of the Boii, in German Böheim or Böhmen. This tribe were driven out by the Markomans, but the land still retained their name. The Markomans were in turn conquered by the Lombards, and in the middle of the sixth century, after the overthrow of Thuringia, there was a great migration of Slavic * That an excess of consonants does not necessarily produce harshness, we have the opinion of eminent authority. "Euphony and feminine softness of language are two very different things. It is true that in most of the Slavic dialects, with the exception of the Servian, the consonants are predominant; but if we consider a language in a philosophical point of view, the consonants, as being the signs of ideas, and the vowels, as being mere bearers in the service of the consonants, appear in a quite different light. The more consonants, the richer is a language in ideas. Exempla sunt in promtu."-Schaffarik, Geschichte, etc. + See Adelung's Mithridates, and Schaffarik's Slavic Ethnography. Kopitar has shown that a people inhabiting ancient Sparta, and whose language is unintelligible to the Greeks, speak a tongue of Slavic origin. See the Wiener Jahrbücher, vol. xvii. § Schlöger, speaking of the old Slavic, says: “Its model was the Greek language, in those days the most cultivated in the world; although Cedrenus no longer wrote like Xenophon. No idiom was more capable than the Slavonic of adopting the beauties of the Greek.” See his Nestor, iii., p. 224. |
