30
A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE
most chivalrous city in the world, and who (anticipating the modern American) declared that he did not care to live anywhere except there, who visited Bohemia but rarely, and then only for the purpose of levying taxes, and who expressed open contempt for the national language, was bound to produce a strong national reaction in Bohemia. The beginning of the great national movement which culminated in the Hussite wars can undoubtedly be traced as far back as to the reign of
King John. The author of the so-called Chronicle of Dalimil
is
unknown; the researches of recent Bohemian scholars, however, prove that he was a Bohemian noble, probably belonging to the northern districts of the country. From the contents of the book, which is plentifully supplied with dates, it can be gathered that the author began writing in 1308 and finished his work in 1316; of the events from 1279 downward he writes as an eye-witness. Dalimil's Chronicle is one of the most important works of Bohemian literature and the first historical work written in the Bohemian language. Its popularity, to which the pronounced Bohemian-nationalist views of the author no doubt largely contributed, was very great. In proof of this it may be mentioned that, in spite of the wholesale destruction of Bohemian writings, nine complete manuscript copies of the Chronicle are in existence; the oldest of them, curiously, is to be found in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The work was first printed in 1620, during the brief reign of Frederick of the Palatinate, but this edition was from political motives destroyed after the occupation of Prague by the Austrian troops in the autumn of the same year. The book has been several times printed and published in the present century.
