Page:An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry.pdf/13

Rh patriotic scholars revived their native tongue, which for so long had waged an unequal contest with German.

The poetical production of these men—Jungmann, Kollár, Šafařík—is largely represented in Sir John Bowring's book. But there is little token in their work of the splendid fruit their labours were to hear, fifty and a hundred years later. They were philologists and grammarians rather than poets, and most of their verses were more in the nature of academic exercises, intended to render the language more flexible and to widen its power of expression. Yet even here, especially in some of Kollár's patriotic sonnets, there are occasional signs of a freedom from conventional phraseology and a pleasing freshness which were