Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/11



HE Bohemians have been the torchbearers in the Slavic revival which has awakened the dormant national consciousness of the minor Slavic peoples, and which had indirectly brought Russian literature to its fullest fruition. This task was accomplished by the great Čech philologists and historians of the first half of the nineteenth century, but the Čechs have also contributed substantially to the great and growing Slavic literature, which bids fair te occupy the foremost rank in the near future.

Bohemia is particularly rich in its poetic output. Until the appearance of J. S. Machar, Jaroslav Vrchlický, the Čech Longfellow, was considered the leading poet, even as he was the most voluminous. Machar himself, who was born at Kolin in 1864 of poor artisans and for the last twenty years has been a bank official at Vienna, began his