Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/314

Rh 302 POLAND [LITERATURE. coats of arms. The poets of this period are, as may be imagined, in most cases mere rhymsters ; there are, however, a few whose names are worth recapitulating, such as Wactaw Potocki (&amp;lt;. 1622-e. 1696), now known to have been the author of the Wojna Chocimska, or &quot; War of Khotin,&quot; 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 ap peared 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 Neio Mercury. In one passage he censures King Michael for ceding Podolia to the Turks. Samuel Twar- dowski (1600-1660) was the most prolific poet of the period of the Vasas. His most important poem is Wtadysiaw IV., King of Poland, in which he sings in a very bombastic strain the various expeditions of the Polish monarch. A bitter satirist appeared in the person of Christopher Opalinski (1609-1656). His works were pub lished under the title of Juvenalis Redivivus, and, although boasting but little poetical merit, give us very curious pictures of the times. Vespasian Kochowski (born between 1630 and 1633, died in 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. Another poet was Andrew Morsztyn (born about 1620, died about the commencement of the 18th century), an astute courtier, who was finance minister (podskdrbi) 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 (see p.290). 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 C /tronica Gestarum in Europa Singularium of the ecclesiastic Paul Piasecki (1580-1649), who is an authority for the reigns of Sigismund III. and Wtadystaw IV., and Rudawski, who describes events from the acces sion of John Casimir to the peace of Oliwa (1648-1660) ; and as valuable materials for history may be mentioned the five huge volumes of Andrew Chrysostom Zatuski (1711), bishop of Warmia. This work is entitled Epistolse Historieo-Familiares. It would be impossible to recapitu late 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 neighbour hood 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 in sight 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 Jakdba Sobieskiego kasztelana Krakowskiego dana panu Orchowskiemu ze strony synuw, 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 w r as published by the Jesuit Koialowicz ; the first volume appeared at Dantzic in 1650. A valuable work on the condition of Poland was written by Stanistaw Leszczynski, who was twice chosen king, entitled Gtos wohiy wolnosc ubezpiecmjacy (&quot; A Free Voice Guaranteeing Freedom &quot;), where he tells the Poles some homely and perhaps dis agreeable truths illustrating the maxim Summa libertas etiam perire volentibus. A notable man was Joseph Andrew Zatuski, bishop of Zaluski. Kieff, 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 founda tion of the imperial public library. According to Nitsch- mann in his Geschichte der Polnischen Litteratur a work which has been of service in the preparation of this article the books were transported to Russia very care lessly, and many of them injured by the way. It was especially rich in works relating to Polish history. Kon- arski edited in six volumes a valuable work entitled Volumina Legum, containing a complete collection of Polish laws from the time of the statute of Wislica. He did much good also in founding throughout the country schools for the education of the sons of the upper classes, but as yet nothing had been done for popular education properly so-called. About the close of this period we have some valuable writers on Polish history, which now began to be studied critically, such as Hartknoch in his Alt- und Neues Preussen (1684), a work in which arc pre served interesting specimens of the old Prussian language, and Lengnich (1689-1774), author of the valuable Jus Publicum Regni Polonix, which appeared in 1742. We now come to the reign of the last Polish king, Stan istaw Poniatowski, and the few quiet years before the final division of the country, during which the French taste was all-powerful. This is the second great period of the development of Polish literature, which has known nothing of mediaeval romanticism. The literature of the first or Renaissance period gives us some good poets, who although occasionally imitators are not without national feeling, and a goodly array of chroniclers, most of whom made use of Latin. In the second or French period we get verse- makers rather than poets, who long to be Frenchmen, and sigh over the barbarism of their country ; but the study of history in a critical spirit is beginning under the influence of Naruszewicz, Albertrandi, and others. In the third period, that of modern romanticism, we get true national ism, but it is too often the literature of exile and despair. Here may be mentioned, although living a little time before the reign of Stanistaw, a Polish poetess, Elizabeth Druzbacka (1695-1760), whose writings show a feeling for nature at a time when verse-making of the most artificial type was prevalent throughout the country. The portrait prefixed to the Leipsic edition of her works is a striking one, representing a handsome, intel lectual-looking woman, dressed in the garb of some religious order. Her Life of David in verse appears tedious, but many of the descriptions in the Seasons