Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/12

 and shrunken form in the rural districts, the homely speech of illiterate peasants. By them the spark was kept glimmering under the ashes, and when a stronger racial and national feeling again began to assert itself a century ago, the devotees of Czech national expression turned a loving attention to this spark and fanned it with infinite care into a brighter glow.

The moving spirit of this resuscitation of the Czech literary language was a schoolmaster, Josef Jungmann. What Dr Johnson had done for the English language, Jungmann did for the Czech. Single-handed he carried out the enormous task of compiling a Dictionary of the Czech Language. But he had not the advantage that Johnson had of finding his subject ready and highly developed; he had to collect the fragments of an impoverished and debased language, corrupted by the influx of foreign words. He recreated the pure Slav language from the old Czech literature which he unearthed, and from the peasants’ vernacular; he tested its power and beauty and its fitness for expression of poetic-thought by his translation of foreign classics. It is an interesting and remarkable fact that the work which practically accomplished this resur-