Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/379

362 that is now shared by almost all Bohemian scholars. Dobrovský expressed himself strongly on the subject. He wrote: "It (i.e. the MS.) is a knavery which they (the "discoverers") committed from hatred of the Germans, and from exaggerated patriotism, for the purpose of deceiving themselves and others."

Dobrovský died in 1829, at a time when the question whether the Bohemian language should live or not was already decided in the affirmative sense. He had during the last years of his life become very unpopular among the Bohemian patriots, but events have proved that his critical faculties sometimes guided him better than enthusiasm did others. As a philologist of the Slav languages Dobrovský was in advance of his time. Etymological monstrosities, such as Kollar sometimes committed in his Staroitalia Slavjanska, would have been impossible to Dobrovský.

Very different from the calm scholarly nature of Dobrovský was the temperament of the four enthusiastic patriots to whom, with, of course, the co-operation of minor writers, the revival of Bohemian literature is due. I refer to Jungmann, Kollar, Safařik, and Palacký.

was born in 1773 at Hudlice, a small village near Beroun in Bohemia. As Hudlice was even then a thoroughly Bohemian village, Jungmann first acquired his native language; but when sent to school at Beroun—where, as indeed everywhere in Bohemia at that time, the teaching was entirely German—he almost forgot Bohemian, and soon found it far easier to express himself in German. When on a visit to his native village an old relation playfully accused him of "stammering" whenever he spoke Bohemian. This remark, as Jungmann has himself told us, made a great impression on