Page:A grammar of the Bohemian or Cech language.djvu/16

x the present, a revival of the national spirit took place; the Bohemian Museum at Prague was founded in 1818, and the efforts of such men as Dobrovský, Palacký, Schafarik, Jungmann, and Kollár placed the Bohemian language on a sure footing. Palacký told the world his country’s history, Schafarik traced the ancient abodes of the Slavonic race, Jungmann published a copious dictionary of the Bohemian language, and Kollár became the national poet. Their work has been continued till the present day, and Bohemia can now boast a goodly array of authors, including such names as Vrchlický, Svatopluk Čech, Sládek, Eliška Krásnohorská (the nom de guerre of Jindřiška Pech), Prof. Kalousek, the historian, and many others. The reader who wishes to know something of the earlier literature may be referred to the pages of Count Lützow’s book (Bohemia, an Historical Sketch . London, 1896).

The plan of the present little work may be stated briefly as follows. The classification of the nouns and verbs is based, with only slight modifications, upon those given by Miklosich in his great Comparative Grammar (Vergleichende Grammatik der Slavischen Sprachen. Second Edition, Vienna, 1876). The language is thus brought into harmony with the principles which I have endeavoured to carry out in my Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian grammars. As I have said on previous occasions, in order to understand these languages thoroughly we must always keep in mind the relations in which they stand to the oldest Slavonic known, i.e. the Palaeoslavonic,