Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/248

Rh Dispute of Brother Augusta with the Calixtine (Utraquist) Clergy, and more particularly his collection of hymns, enjoyed for a time great popularity. The hymns of Augusta, in particular, were widely used by the brethren up to the time of the dissolution of the Unity. Blahoslav, the only literary critic of this period, gives his opinion of Augusta in these words: "Brother John Augusta," he writes, "was a remarkable and great man, who wrote many books as well as hymns. All that he wrote before he was imprisoned was written in good Bohemian phrases excultæ, verba selecta; delectabatur admodum archaismis, tamen decenter. In summa totum genus dicendi fuit floridum atque excultum. Valebat ingenio et memoria, ac diligenter legebat bonos authores in our Bohemian language. Fluebat igitur sua vis copiosius et exultans, though he sometimes wished to be too lepidus et asiaticus. . . . In his sermons he seemed somewhat coarse though fervent. Ardebant omnia, words, pronunciation, and gesticulation. Referrebat zelo illo magna ex parte Lutherum. When, twenty-six years ago, I heard Augusta, and shortly afterwards Luther, it appeared to me that I had never heard two such enthusiastic preachers, nor two who in every way so greatly resembled one another."

A somewhat younger contemporary of Augusta was Brother Blahoslav, whom I have just quoted, and who, like him, also became one of the bishops of the Unity. His writings differ somewhat from those of the brethren I have mentioned above. The influence of humanism, absent from their works, is distinctly noticeable in Blahoslav. He also wrote on theology—what Bohemian writer of that period did not?—but it is evident that other studies were far more to his taste. He tells us, indeed,