Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/68

Rh a language adapted to historic writing, it was already extensively used for writings on matters of law. Such works hardly belong to a history of literature; yet the Kniha starého pána z Rožmberka, the book of the old Lord of Rosenberg, deserves mention. It contains an enumeration of the laws and customs of Bohemia as they existed in the author's time. It is the oldest prose work in the Bohemian language, and dates either from the beginning of the fourteenth or from the last years of the thirteenth century. Another early legal work is the Výklad na pravo zemske, exposition of the law of the land, which is attributed to Andrew of Duba. Several other very early Bohemian writings on legal matters have been preserved.

One of the earliest and most curious prose works in the Bohemian language is the singular dialogue known as Tkadleček the Weaver. The book was one of the first that were printed when the revival of the Bohemian literature in the present century began. It was published by Wenceslas Hanka in 1824, and was greatly admired. Recently the value of the book has, I think, been unduly depreciated. It certainly abounds with affectations and conceits such as were usual in the literature of most countries at the time—about 1407—when the book appeared; yet the complaints of the lover sometimes reveal a touch of real passion, and the style is generally fluent and lively. The monotony and the repetitions for which the lovers' long speeches are blamed are no peculiarity of the Weaver, but rather are ever inherent to the speech of the discarded and distressful lover. Far inferior to the speeches of the lover are the