Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/315

Rh LITERATURE.] POLAND 303 are elegant. Unfortunately she introduces Latinisms, so that her Polish is by no means pure. A national theatre was founded at Warsaw in 1765 under the influence of the court, but it was not till long after wards that anything really national connected with the drama appeared in Poland. Thomas Kajetan We.gierski, who was chamberlain to the king, enjoyed a considerable reputation among his countrymen for his satirical ^yriting. He was a kind of Polish Churchill, and like his English parallel died young (1755-1787). His life also appears to have been as irregular as Churchill s. In consequence of an attack on the empress of Russia, he was compelled to leave Poland, and accordingly made a tour in Italy, France, America, and England, dying at Marseilles at the early age of thirty-three. His poetry shows the influence of the French taste, then prevalent throughout Europe. In times of great national disasters he deserves to be remem bered as a true patriot ; but the spirit of his poetry is altogether unwholesome. It is the wailing cry of a mori bund nation. The great laureate of the court of Stanislaus was Trembecki (1722-1812), whose sympathies were too much with the Russian invaders of his country. He was little more than a fluent poetaster, and is now almost for gotten. One of his most celebrated pieces was Zofjowka, written on the country seat of Felix Potocki, a Polish magnate, for this was the age of descriptive as well as didactic poetry. Perhaps the English gave the hint in such productions as &quot;Cooper s Hill,&quot; The old age of Trembecki appears to have been ignoble and neglected ; he had indeed &quot;fallen upon evil days and evil tongues&quot;; and when he died at an advanced age all the gay courtiers of whom he had been the parasite were either dead or had submitted to the Muscovite yoke. He comes before us as a belated epicurean, whose airy trifles cannot be warbled in an atmosphere surcharged with tempests and gunpowder. The end of the 18th century was not the period for a court poet in Poland. S.sicki. The most conspicuous poet, however, of the time was Ignatius Krasicki, bishop of Warmia (1735-1801). He was the friend of Frederick the Great and a prominent member of the king s literary club at Sans Souci. Krasicki wrote an epic on the war of Khotin, the same as had furnished the subject of the poem of Potocki, of which Krasicki in all probability had never heard, and also that of the Dalmatian Gundulic. Krasicki s poem is at best but a dull affair, in fact a pale copy of a poor original, the Henriade of Voltaire. His mock heroics are, to say the least, amusing, and among these may be mentioned Jfyszeis, where he describes how King Popiel, according to the legend, was eaten up by rats. His Monachomachia is in six cantos, and is a satire upon the monks. The bishop was also the writer of some pretty good comedies. In fact most styles of composition were attempted by him,- of course satires and fables among the number. He presents himself to us much more like a transplanted French abb6 than a Pole. In the year 1801 he travelled to Berlin, and died there after a short illness. Among his other works the bishop published in 1781-82 in two volumes a kind of encyclopsedia of belles lettres entitled Zbior Wiadomosci. His estimates of various great poets are not very accurate. Of course he finds Shakespeare a very &quot; incorrect &quot; author, although he is willing to allow him considerable praise for his vigour. Another bishop-poet was Adam Naruszewicz. The existence of so many ecclesi astical writers was a natural feature in Polish literature; they formed the only really cultured class in the community, which consisted besides of a haughty ignorant nobility living among their serfs, and (at a vast distance) those serfs themselves, in a brutalized condition, Burghers there were, properly speaking, none, for most of the citizens in the large towns were foreigners governed by the Jtis Magdeburgicum. Naruszewicz has not the happy vivacity of Krasicki ; he attempts all kinds of poetry, especially satire and fable. He is at best but a mediocre poet ; but he has succeeded better as a historian, and especially to be praised is his &quot; History of the Polish Nation &quot; (Historya Narodu Polskiego), which, however, he was not able to carry further than the year 1386. He also wrote an account of the Polish general Chodkiewicz and translated Tacitus and Horace. Interesting memoirs have been pub lished by Kilinski, a Warsaw shoemaker, and Kosmian, state referendary, who lived about this time and saw much of the War of Independence and other political affairs. Among the smaller poets of this period may be mentioned Karpirlski (1741-1828), a writer of sentimental elegies in j the style then so very much in fashion, and Kniaznin, who nourished his muse on classical themes and wrote some odes ; but his poetry is not of a high order. He was the court poet of Prince Adam Czartoryski at Pulawy, and furnished odes in commemoration of all the important events which occurred in the household. He lost his reason on the downfall of Poland, and died after eleven years insanity in 1807. Julian Ursin Niemcewicz (1757- 1841) was one of the most popular of Polish poets at the commencement of the present century (see NIEMCEWICZ). His most popular work is the &quot;Collection of Historical Songs &quot; (Spieivy Historyczne), where he treats of the chief heroes of Polish history. Besides these he wrote one or two good plays, and a novel in letters, on the story of two Jewish lovers. John Paul Woronicz (1757-1829) born in Volhynia, and at the close of his life bishop of Warsaw and primate of Poland, was a very eloquent divine, and has been called the modern Skarga, A valuable worker in the field of Slavonic philology was Linde, the author of an excellent Polish dictionary in six volumes. For a long time the cultivation of Polish philology was in a low state, owing to the prevalence of Latin in the 17th century and French in the 18th. No Polish grammar worthy of the name appeared till that of Kopczynski at the close of the 18th century, but the reproach has been taken away in modern times by the excellent works of Malecki and Malinowski. Rakowiecki, who edited the Eousskaia Pravda, and Macieiowski (who died in 1883, aged ninety), author of a valuable work on Slavonic law, may here be mentioned. Here we have a complete survey of all the leading codes of Slavonic jurisprudence. At a later period (in 1856) appeared the work of Helcel, Starodawne prawa polskiego pomniki (&quot; Ancient Memorials of Polish Law&quot;). Aloysius Feliriski (1771-1820) produced an historical tragedy, Barbara Radziivitt, and some good comedies were written by Count Alexander Fredro (1793- 1876). In fact Fredro may be considered the most enter- Polish taining writer for the stage which Poland has produced, drama. He introduced genuine comedy among his countrymen. The influence of Moliere can be very clearly seen in his pieces ; his youth was spent chiefly in France, where he formed one of the soldiers of the Polish legion of Napoleon and joined in the expedition to Russia. His first produc tion was Pan Geldhab, written in 1819 and produced at Warsaw in 1821. From 1819 to 1835 he wrote about seventeen pieces and then abandoned publishing, having taken offence at some severe criticisms. At his death he left several comedies, which were issued in a posthumous edition. There is a good deal of local colouring in the pieces of Fredro ; although the style is French, the characters are taken from Polish life. From him may be said to date the formation of anything like a national Polish theatre, so that his name marks an epoch. The Poles, like many of the other nations of Europe, had religious plays at an early period. They were originally