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LITERATURE] his son Joachim (1540-1599). There is also a Chronicle by Bartholomew Paprocki. In 1582 was also published the Chronicle of Stryjkowski, full of curious learning, and still of great use to the student of history. Five years later appeared the Annales Poloniae of Sarnicki. The last three works are in Latin.

A few words may be said here about the spread of Protestantism in Poland, which is so intimately mixed up with

the development of the national language. The doctrines of Hus had entered the country in very early times, and we find Polish recensions of Bohemian hymns; even the hymn to the Virgin previously mentioned is supposed to have a Czech basis. The bishops were soon active against those who refused to conform to the doctrines of the Roman church. Thus we find that Bishop Andrew of Bnin seized five Hussite priests and caused them to be burnt in the market of Posen in 1439. A hundred years afterwards a certain Katharina Malcher, on account of her Utraquist opinions, was condemned by Gamrat, the bishop of Cracow, to be burnt, which sentence was accordingly carried out in the rag market at Cracow. As early as 1530 Lutheran hymns were sung in the Polish language at Thorn. In Königsberg, John Seklucyan, a personal friend of Luther, published a collection of Christian Songs. He was born in Great Poland, and was at first a Roman Catholic priest in Posen, but afterwards embraced the Protestant faith and was invited by Duke Albert as a preacher to Königsberg, where he died in 1578. He executed the first translation of the New Testament in 1551. Four years afterwards appeared a complete Polish Bible published by Scharffenberg at Cracow. In 1553 appeared at Brześć the Protestant translation of the whole Bible made by a committee of learned men and divines, and published at the expense of Nicholas Radziwiłł, a very rich Polish magnate who had embraced the Protestant doctrines. This book is now of great rarity because his son Christopher, having been induced to become a Roman Catholic by the Jesuit Skarga, caused all copies of his father's Bible which he could find to be burnt. One, however, is to be seen in the Bodleian Library, and another in the library of Christ Church at Oxford. A Socinian Bible was issued by Simon Budny in 1570 at Nieświez, as he professed to find many faults in the version issued under the patronage of Radziwiłł, in 1597 appeared the Roman Catholic version of the Jesuit Wujek; and in 1632 the so-called Danzig Bible, which is in use among Protestants and is still the most frequently reprinted.

Up to this time Polish literature, although frequently rhetorical and too much tinctured with classical influences, had

still exhibited signs of genius. But now, owing to the frivolous studies introduced by the Jesuits, the so-called macaronic period supervened, which lasted from 1606 to 1764, and was a time of great degradation for the language and literature. The former was now mixed with Latin and classical expressions; much of the literature consists of fulsome panegyric, verses written on the marriages and funerals of nobles, with conceits and fantastic ideas, devoid of all taste, drawn from their coats of arms. The poets of this period are, as may be imagined, in most cases mere rhymesters; there are, however, a few whose names are worth recapitulating, such as Wacław Potocki (c. 1622-c. 1696), now known to have been the author of the Wojna Chocimska, or “War of Khotin,” the same campaign which afterwards formed the subject of the epic of Krasicki. At first the author was supposed to have been Andrew Lipski, but the real poet was traced by the historian Szajnocha. The epic, which remained in manuscript till 1850, is a genuine representation of Polish life; no picture so faithful appeared till the Pan Tadeusz of Mickiewicz. Moreover, Potocki had the good taste to avoid the macaronic style so much in vogue; his language is pure and vigorous. He does not hesitate to introduce occasionally satirical remarks on the luxury of the times, which he compares, to its disadvantage, with the simplicity of the old Polish life. There is also another poem attributed to Potocki called the New Mercury. In one

passage he censures King Michael for ceding Podolia to the Turks. Samuel Twardowski (1600-1660) was the most prolific poet of the period of the Vasas. His most important poem is Wladystaus IV., King of Poland, in which he sings in a very bombastic stran the various expeditions of the Polish monarch. A bitter satirist appeared in the person of Christopher Opalinski (1609-1656). His works were published under the title of Juvenalis redivivus, and, although boasting but little poetical merit, give us very curious pictures of the times. Hieronymus Vespasian Kohcowski (1633-1699) was a soldier-poet, who went through the campaigns against the Swedes and Cossacks; he has left several books of lyrics full of vivacity, a Christian epic and a Polish psalmody. Another poet was Andrew Morsztyn (born about 1620, died about the commencement of the 18th century), an astute courtier, who was finance minister (podskárbi) under John Casimir, and was a devoted adherent of the French party at court, in consequence of which, in the reign of Sobieski, he was compelled to leave his native country and settle in France. His poems are elegant and free from the conceits and pedantry of the earlier writers. In fact, he introduced into Poland the easy French manner of such writers as Voiture. He translated the Cid of Corneille, and wrote a poem on the subject of Psyche, based upon the well-known Greek myth. History in the macaronic period made a backward step: it had been written in the Polish language in the golden age; it was now again to take a Latin form, as in the Chronica Gestarum in Europa singularium of the ecclesiastic Paul Piasecki (1580-1649), who is an authority for the reigns of Sigismund III. and Wladisłaus IV., and Rudawski, who describes events from the accession of John Casimir to the peace of Oliva (1648-1660); and as valuable materials for history may be mentioned the five huge volumes of Andrew Chrysostom Zaluski (1711), bishop of Warmia. This work is entitled Epistolae historico-familiares. It would be impossible to recapitulate here the great quantity of material in the shape of memoirs which has come down, but mention must be made of those of John Chrysostom Pasek, a nobleman of Masovia, who has left us very graphic accounts of life and society in Poland; after a variety of adventures and many a well-fought battle, he returned to the neighbourhood of Cracow, where he died between 1699 and 1701. Some of the most characteristic stories illustrating Polish history are drawn from this book. A later period, that of the miserable epoch of Augustus III., is described very graphically in the memoirs of Matuszewicz, first edited by Pawinski at Warsaw in 1876. Relating to the same period are also the memoirs of Bartholomew Michalowski (Pamietniki Bartlomieja Michalowskiego). A curious insight into the course of education which a young Polish nobleman underwent is furnished by the instructions which James Sobieski, the father of the celebrated John, gave to Orchowski, the tutor of his sons. This has been twice printed in comparatively recent times (Instrukcya Jakoba Sobieskiego kasztelana Krakowskiego dana panu Orchowskiemu ze strony synów, Vilna, 1840). The old gentleman in his aristocratic imperiousness frequently reminds us of the amusing directions given by Sir John Wynne to his chaplain, quoted in Pennant's Tour in Wales.

A History of the Lithuanians in Latin was published by the Jesuit Koiałowicz; the first volume appeared at Danzig in 1650. A valuable work on the condiuon of Poland was written by Stanislaus Leszczynski, who was twice chosen king, entitled Głos wolny wolność ubezpieczający (A Free Voice Guaranteeing Freedom), where he tells the Poles some homely and perhaps disagreeable truths illustrating the maxim Summa libertas etiam perire volentibus.

A notable man was Joseph Andrew Załuski, bishop of Kiev, a Pole who had become thoroughly frenchified—so much so, that he preached in French to the fashionable congregations of Warsaw. He collected a splendid library of about 300,000 volumes and 15,000 manuscripts, which he bequeathed to the Polish nation; but it was afterwards carried off to St Petersburg, where it formed the foundation of the imperial public library. According to Nitschmann in his Geschichte der polnischen