Page:The Queens Court Manuscript with Other Ancient Bohemian Poems, 1852, Cambridge edition.djvu/20

viii Szafarzik und Anmerkungen von F. Palacky.” A new Polyglott edition is now in course of publication with the German translation of Svoboda, the Polish of Siemienski, a Russian translation by P. N. Berg, an Italian by Professor F. Francesconi, &c., and the English translation now respectfully offered to the English public.

It is scarcely possible to appreciate the important and beneficial influence which the publication of these relics of former literary glories has exerted upon the intellectual growth and cultivation of Bohemia. Not only has a generation of poets arisen worthy of any age and any nation, but a historical school has also begun to place Slavonic prose in a position to rival that of hitherto more cultivated and polished literatures. It is needless to multiply names; suffice it to mention, that the great Bohemian history of Palacky, which was begun in German and translated by the Author into Bohemian, is now being continued originally in Bohemian, and the German translation is made by another hand. Could there be a greater proof of the progress of Slavonic literature, than that so large a work should find a