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On a beautiful and brilliant September morning, twenty years ago, the sad news reached Prague that Jaroslav Vrchlicky died after four years of both physical and mental anguish. The capital was shocked by the irreparable loss of the greatest Czech poet.

And we, his former students from the University of Prague, where he had been active for many years as professor of the history of modern literature, were touched more deeply by his early departure than perhaps anyone. For, how long ago was it that we listened to his absorbing lectures dealing with the Spanish dramatists of the 17th century, with Goethe's "Faust" and Madach's "Tragedy of Man," with Dante's "Divina Commedia" and Shelley's "The Cenci"—to name only a few of his many subjects. We were a mere handful, not more than four or five graduates who, in the narrow worm-eaten benches of the old college of Klementinum, drank from the inexhaustible fountain of Vrchlicky's profound knowledge, matured poetical wisdom and sparkling critical inspiration.

We vividly saw our beloved professor, as he walked the streets of the city of "a hundred towers." In his grotesque, "out-of-fashion" overcoat, his slouchy, large brimmed gray felt hat, his long silvery hair protruding underneath, and occasionally a lighted cigarette in his mouth, he was a picture of the heroic dreamer amidst the toil and tumult of a great city in the modern, mechanical age.