tion was translated into practically every European language. His “Folk and National Songs of the Czechs,” were followed by “Sto Prostonárodních Pohádek a Pověstí” (One Hundred Folk Tales and Legends) and by the “Vybrané Báje a Pověsti Národní Jiných Větví Slovanských” (Selected National Myths and Legends of Other Slavic Branches).
Karel Hynek Mácha, the gifted Czech successor to the peculiar spirit and genius of Byron, is a pioneer in the romantic movement in his country. Though he died in his twenty-sixth year, he had given incontrovertible evidence of his leadership in this field in his lyrics, ballads, and hymns and in his longer production “Máj” (May) which aroused at once a chorus of approval from the Byronic rhapsodists and of stinging censure from the critics, who because they did not admire his philosophy refused to evaluate properly the beauty and perfection of Mácha’s poetic art which did not win appreciation until long after his death. Of his short stories, the best is “Márinka,” a daring and realistic genre of the proletariat.
To this period also belong the early dramatists, Václav Kliment Klicpera (1792–1859) author of a series of historical plays and comedies some of which are still performed and Josef Kajetan Tyl who early left his university studies to organize a traveling theatrical company producing only Czech plays. Tyl wrote and produced over thirty exceedingly popular plays many of which like certain ones of his novels were summarily
