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 his literary career as a poet at nineteen when his collection “The Carpathian Muse with a Slavonic Lyre” was published. Later, through the assistance of Palácký, he removed from Slovakia to Prague devoting himself indefatigably to a work of rare quality—“Slovanské Starožitnosti” (Slavonic Antiquities) in which he showed the ancient origin of the Slavs, and proved by an enormous number of authoritative documents and other evidence their early civilization and culture and their linguistic, topographic and historical relationship to the members of the Indo-European group of languages.

František Ladislav Čelakovský, intended for the priesthood like so many Czech literary men, early gave up the plan of his parents and devoted himself to Slavistic and poetic studies. He had gathered great numbers of folk songs, poems and sayings which last were eventually included in a collection entitled “Mudrosloví Národu Slovanského v Příslovích” (The Philosophy of the Slavic Nation in its Proverbs). His first original work was his collection of epics “Ohlasy Písní Ruských” (Echoes of Russian Songs) which he later augmented by his lyrical “Ohlasy Písní Českých” (Echoes of Czech Songs). Palácký regarded this work as of equal worth with Kollár’s “Slávy Dcera.”

Karel Jaromír Erben collected a vast quantity of folk songs and tales which he wove into delicate and beautiful poems. His first collection “Kytice” (The Bouquet) by its beauty and harmonious arrangement gave earnest of the treasures to come. This collec-