Page:Bohemian legends and other poems.djvu/9



literature is hardly known; indeed, many people do not even know that such a literature exists at all. Of late some praiseworthy efforts have heen made by Mr. Wratislaw, M.A. (late fellow of Christ College, Cambridge), and some French writers, to rescue from oblivion at least something of Bohemian literature. In his own words (Literature of Bohemia, George Bell Co. 1878), he says: “And at the present time the people of Great Britain are for the most part in a similar state of ignorance with regard to the literature of Bohemia, scarcely believing indeed that it has any literature at all, and utterly at a loss to account for that great intellectual and religious revolution, which, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, shook the power of Rome to its foundation, and animated a Slavonic people of only four millions to maintain successfully a single-handed conflict against the Papacy and the German empire for full two hundred years. And if it yielded at length to overwhelming numbers and weight, it was not until it had been undermined for nearly a century by the crafty and cruel policy of scions of the Hapsburg dynasty upon its throne. It is a very unfortunate circumstance that so much of Bohemian literature has been lost, or rather ruthlessly destroyed by the emissaries and agents of the Church of Rome. It mattered little to such barbarians whether any work that fell into their clutches was of Catholic or Protestant