Page:Bohemian legends and other poems.djvu/11

Rh tion, that history and heroism have furnished few subjects for the Bohemian national songs, and, he says, is the more remarkable when they are compared or contrasted with those of other Slavonian races, especially the Servian and the Russian. But how should such songs exist or rather if they ever existed, how should they be long preserved in a state of society where no man dares to be a Bohemian? That freedom of thought and expression which opens to the poet the great expanse of space and time the whole field of the past and the future which allows him to revel in all that is delightful in recollection, and in all that is beautiful in anticipation is denied to the minstrel of Bohemia. He may neither record the struggles of his ancestors for liberty, nor dream of the day when self-government shall give to his country whatever of happiness she is capable of enjoying. Love, of all the passions which he is permitted to sing, is that which allows the widest scope to his imagination and love is the ever-ruling subject of his verse. And surely their popular poets have treated this subject with exquisite tenderness and effect.” These are the opinions and words of two Englishmen, who trod before me the thorny path of Bohemian literature. Had their works been published in Austria, the same fate that met my book, “Bohemian Legends and Ballads,” would have met them. They would have been confiscated. Dr. John Bowring, speaking of poor Hanka, says: “It is to be hoped that no impediment will be thrown in his way, which one cannot but fear, from the arbitrary suppression of the fifth volume of his collection. It is not much to allow, that those who have no hope of the future may be permitted to indulge in the memories of the past.” This sin I committed, and so my poor little book was confiscated. I can only say that the pub-