Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/381

364 in the national language, but if this is true the plan was never carried out. In later years Jungmann devoted whatever leisure his official duties left him to studies of a scientific, and particularly of a philological character.

Great as were his merits as a translator, the last-named works constitute his principal claim to the gratitude of his countrymen. The earlier of the great works of Jungmann is his History of Bohemian Literature. Jungmann did not follow Dobrovsky's example, but wrote in Bohemian. The book was first published in 1825, and a second enlarged edition appeared in 1849, after the author's death. The book is scarcely what in the present day would be called the history of a literature; perhaps such a task was impossible at the time Jungmann wrote. Jungmann's history contains an enumeration of all writers, great or small, of whom writings in the Bohemian language have been preserved. Jungmann's intense patriotism induced him to attempt to prove that at almost all periods works on almost all subjects written in Bohemian had existed. Every translator of even the most valueless work, every preacher who had caused even the most worthless Bohemian sermon to be printed, therefore finds a place in this book. Yet this very minuteness and absence of criticism which we find in the book render it very valuable as a collection of materials; and even now, seventy years after its first appearance, it is indispensable to all students of Bohemian literature. The introductions to each of the "odděleni" (divisions) contain a valuable historical and etymological account of the development of the Bohemian language and literature in each of the periods into which Jungmann has divided his history.

Jungmann also wrote numerous literary articles for