Jan Kollár, who was clergyman of the Slovak Lutheran Church in Budapest, wrote two epoch-making books—a long epic poem entitled “The Daughter of Slava,” in which he sang the glories of Slavdom and created, in imitation of Dante, a mythical Slav Olympus and Hades, where the friends and enemies of the Slav race are picturesquely grouped, and a short essay advocating “The Literary Reciprocity of all Slavs.” Both books awakened a resounding echo throughout the Slav world. About the same time another Slovak, Šafářík, a professor in Prague, wrote an equally epoch-making book on “Slav Antiquities,” which has remained the foundation stone of all study of Slav origins, whether in the matter of language, geography, or race.
The literary movement in Prague steadily gathered force, and acquired a political tinge which all the efforts of the police failed to efface. The Czech press came to life, and—as all references to internal Bohemian politics were as carefully muzzled by the censorship of the forties as they are to-day in the existing reign of terror—one of their most brilliant journalists, Havliček, contrived to criticize the Government in the skilfully veiled form of reports on the condition of Ireland!
In the great year of revolution, 1848, the growing Slav movement found expression in a Slav Congress held in Prague, with the great Czech historian Francis Palacky as President and
