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Rh willing to render him service.—The king would not hear of the proposal and advanced—Saying, 'Rather than that I did this, I would let myself be killed.'—Then the king with his Germans rushed into battle against Rudolph—And alas! he fell there—This misfortune occurred on the day of St. Rufus, a Friday—(That holy martyr's day is a great festival)—It was in the year since the birth of the Son of God—One Thousand Two Hundred and Seventy-eight." Dalimil's chronicle, as already noted, enjoyed great popularity in Bohemia for many years, in fact, up to the sixteenth century, when Hajek's chronicle took its place. In consequence of this popularity the chronicle found continuators, and several of the manuscripts contain additions that are obviously by a different writer. Shorter tales relating warlike events in a manner and metre similar to Dalimil also vouch for the popularity of the chronicle. Such are the tales of William of Zajic, Ottokar and Zavis, and The Death of King John, the most interesting one to English readers.

To the early literature of Bohemia a considerable amount of didactic and satirical poetry also belongs. The most important of the writers of such verses is Smil Flaška, lord of Pardubic the earliest Bohemian writer whose name and personality are well known. He is the author of the Father's Advice to his Son, of the New Council, one of the many beast-epics of the Middle Ages, and of a collection of proverbs. Other satirical writings, such as the Contest of Water and Wine and the Groom and the Scholar, were formerly, though incorrectly, attributed to Smil. All these satirical and didactic poems have little poetical value, but are of great interest for the student of the social condition of Bohemia in the fourteenth century. They contain,