Litterature—a work which has been of service in the preparation of this article—the books were transported to Russia very carelessly, and many of them injured by the way. It was especially rich in works relating to Polish history. Konarski edited in six volumes a valuable work entitled Volumina legum, containing a complete collection of Polish laws from the time of the statute of Wislica. He did much good also in founding throughout the country schools for the education of the sons of the upper classes, but as yet nothing had been done for popular education properly so-called. About the close of this period we have some valuable writers on Polish history, which now began to be studied critically, such as Hartknoch in his Alt- und Neues Preussen (1684), a work in which are preserved interesting specimens of the old Prussian language, and Lengnich (1689-1774), author of the valuable Jus publicum regni Poloniae, which appeared in 1742.
We now come to the reign of the last Polish king, Stanislaus Poniatowski, and the few quiet years before the final division of the country, during which the French taste was all powerful. This is the second great period of the development of Polish literature, which has known nothing of medieval romanticism. The literature of the first or Renaissance period gives us some good poets, who although occasionally imitators are not without national feeling, and a goodly array of chroniclers, most of whom made use of Latin. In the second or French period we get verse-makers rather than poets, who long to be Frenchmen, and sigh over the barbarism of their country; but the study of history in a critical spirit is beginning under the influence of Naruszewicz, Albertrandi and others. In the third period, that of modern romanticism, we get true nationalism, but it is too often the literature of exile and despair. Here may be mentioned, although living a little time before the reign of Stanislaus, a Polish poetess, Elizabeth Druzbacka (1695-1760), whose writings show a feeling for nature at a time when verse-making of the most artificial type was prevalent throughout the country. The portrait prefixed to the Leipzig edition of her works is a striking one, representing a handsome, intellectual-looking woman, dressed in the garb of some religious order. Her Life of David in verse appears tedious, but many of the descriptions in the Seasons are elegant. Unfortunately she introduces latinisms, so that her Polish is by no means pure. A national theatre was founded at Warsaw in 1765 under the influence of the court, but it was not till long afterwards that anything really national connected with the drama appeared in Poland. Thomas Kajetan Węgierski (1755-1787), who was chamberlain to the king, enjoyed a considerable reputation among his countrymen for his satirical writing. He was a kind of Polish Churchill, and like his English parallel died young. His life also appears to have been as irregular as Churchill's. In consequence of an attack on the empress of Russia, he was compelled to leave Poland, and accordingly made a tour in Italy, France, America, and England, dying at Marseilles at the early age of thirty-three. His poetry shows the influence of the French taste, then prevalent throughout Europe. In times of great national disasters he deserves to be remembered as a true patriot; but the spirit of his poetry is altogether unwholesome. It is the wailing cry of a moribund nation. The great laureate of the court of Stanislaus was Trembecki (1722-1812), whose sympathies were too much with the Russian invaders of his country. He was little more than a fluent poetaster, and is now almost forgotten. One of his most celebrated pieces was Zofjowka, written on the country seat of Felix Potocki, a Polish magnate, for this was the age of descriptive as well as didactic poetry. Perhaps the English gave the hint in such productions as “Cooper's Hill.” The old age of Trembecki appears to have been ignoble and neglected; he had indeed “fallen upon evil days and evil tongues”; and when he died at an advanced age all the gay courtiers of whom he had been the parasite were either dead or had submitted to the Muscovite yoke. He comes before us as a belated epicurean, whose airy trifles cannot be warbled in an atmosphere surcharged with tempests and gunpowder. The end of the 18th century was not the period for a court poet in Poland.
The most conspicuous poet, however, of the time was Ignatius Krasicki, bishop of Warmia (1735-1801). He was the friend of Krasicki. Frederick the Great and a prominent member of the king's literary club at Sans Souci. Krasicki wrote an epic on the war of Khotin—the same as had furnished the subject of the poem of Potocki, of which Krasicki in all probability had never heard, and also that of the Dalmatian Gundulich. Krasicki's poem is at best but a dull affair, in fact a pale copy of a poor original, the Henriade of Voltaire. His mock heroics are, to say the least, amusing, and among these may be mentioned Myszeis, where he describes how King Popiel, according to the legend, was eaten up by rats. His Monachomachia is in six cantos, and is a satire upon the monks. The bishop was also the writer of some pretty good comedies. In fact most styles of composition were attempted by him—of course satires and fables among the number. He presents himself to us much more like a transplanted French abbé than a Pole. In the year 1801 he travelled to Berlin, and died there after a short illness. Among his other works the bishop published in 1781-1782, in two volumes, a kind of encyclopaedia of belles lettres entitled Zbiór Wiadomości. His estimates of various great poets are not very accurate. Of course he finds Shakespeare a very “incorrect” author, although he is willing to allow him considerable praise for his vigour. F. Morawski (1783-1861) published some excellent Fables (1800) in the manner of Krasicki, and in 1851 an epic entitled My Grandfather's Farm. Adam Naruszewicz (1733-1796) was bishop and poet. The existence of so many ecclesiastical writers was a natural feature in Polish literature; they formed the only really cultured class in the community, which consisted besides of a haughty ignorant nobility living among their serfs, and (at a vast distance) those serfs themselves, in a brutalized condition. Burghers there were, properly speaking, none, for most of the citizens in the large towns were foreigners governed by the Jus magdeburgicum. Naruszewicz has not the happy vivacity of Krasicki; he attempts all kinds of poetry, especially satire and fable. He is at best but a mediocre poet; but he has succeeded better as a historian, and especially to be praised is his “History of the Polish Nation” (Historya narodu polskiego), which, however, he was not able to carry further than the year 1386. He also wrote an account of the Polish general Chodkiewicz, and translated Tacitus and Horace. Interesting memoirs have been published by Kilinski, a Warsaw shoemaker, and Kosmian, state referendary, who lived about this time and saw much of the War of Independence and other political affairs. Among the smaller poets of this period may be mentioned Karpiński (1741-1828), a writer of sentimental elegies in the style then so very much in fashion, and Franciszek Dyonizy Kniaźnin (1750-1807), who nourished his muse on classical themes and wrote several plays. He was the court poet of Prince Adam Czartoryski at Pulawy, and furnished odes in commemoration of all the important events which occurred in the household. He lost his reason on the downfall of Poland, and died after eleven years' insanity in 1807. Julian Ursin Niemcewicz (1758-1841) was one of the most popular of Polish poets at the commencement of the present century (see Niemcewicz). His most popular work is the “Collection of Historical Songs” (Spiewy historyczne), where he treats of the chief heroes of Polish history. Besides these he wrote one or two good plays, and a novel in letters, on the story of two Jewish lovers. John Paul Woronicz (1757-1829) born in Volhynia, and at the close of his life bishop of Warsaw and primate of Poland, was a very eloquent divine, and has been called the modern Skarga. A valuable worker in the field of Slavonic philology was Linde, the author of an excellent Polish dictionary in six volumes. For a long time the cultivation of Polish philology was in a low state, owing to the prevalence of Latin in the 17th century and French in the 18th. No Polish grammar worthy of the name appeared till that of Kopczynski at the close of the 18th century, but the reproach
