Page:The Ballads of Marko Kraljević.djvu/26

 him a place apart. A whole generation elapsed before another Englishman came to glean in the same rich field.

In 1828 Wilhelm Gerhard published at Leipzig his Wila: Serbische Volkslieder und Heldenmärchen. His work included a good deal of material from Vuk untranslated by Talvj, and contained also pieces not given by Vuk but communicated by Gerhard's friend Milutinović, together with a selection from Kačić. To the second volume was attached a bulky "Appendix," consisting of a translation of Merimee's Guzla, for he was one of those who were completely deceived by the Frenchman's tour de force. Gerhard alone was responsible for the unfortunate blunder. The rest of the book, which was the joint work of Gerhard and Milutinović, may be regarded as a satisfactory amplification of the translations of Talvj.

It must strike the reader of this sketch as remarkable that hitherto the name of no Austrian translator has been mentioned. Vuk, the great mainspring of the movement, had his home in Vienna; moreover the Austrian capital for geographical and political reasons was in much closer touch with the Southern Slavs than any other city in Europe, yet characteristically enough Austrian savants and men of letters neglected the opportunity, and so for many years it was left to their more purposeful and energetic fellow-Teutons in Germany to exploit the field. At last, however, Austria bestirred herself. In 1850, Anastasius Grün published a number of translations from the Slovene under the title of Volkslieder aus Krain. Frankl followed with his Gusle, Serbische Nationallieder, dedicated to Vuk's daughter. His object was to present some of the songs in Vuk which had not yet been translated, and he took the greatest pains to reproduce in German the metrical effect of the Serbian originals. A very interesting development now took place. The earliest collectors, from Kačić onwards, had shown a marked and natural disposition