Page:Glimpses of Bohemia by MacDonald (1882).pdf/18

its grammar school, and at least one-third of the parishes their parochial school, and this over and above the schools attached to the monasteries and convents. Huss himself, we are told, did almost as much for his native tongue as Luther for German. He corrected the translation of the Bible partially made in the tenth century, re-arranged the Bohemian alphabet, and fixed the orthography. Bohemians, by the way, claim that their orthography is the best in Europe. With thirty-six letters in their alphabet, and several forms of modification, they say their written language reflects their speech with absolute scientific accuracy. These facts, which are probably new to many, will prepare our readers to hear that the Bohemian literature of the fourteenth century—although almost destroyed by the Jesuits, who, for 150 years, hunted for, and burned Bohemian books; and, until thirty years ago, almost lost out of sight, even in Bohemia is as rich, if not the richest of all, produced in that century, by any country of Europe. Fortunately, some of its treasures have now been opened to English readers. The Rev. Mr. Wratislaw, Bury St. Edmonds, descended from a noble Bohemian family, who were obliged to fly from their country during the persecutions of the seventeenth century, has re-acquired the language of his ancestors, and published several volumes throwing light on the history and literature of their fatherland. His researches have been followed by an able writer in the Westminster Review, whose papers, published in October, 1879, and October, 1881, contain much of the information on which I have drawn. Ballads and rhyming chronicles, romances and legends, showing mostly a traceable connection with the similar productions of other countries, but all in Bohemian colours, and some distinctly and only Slavonic, were as industriously penned by Bohemians as by Chaucer and his contemporaries. The most striking evidence, however, of the advanced condition of Bohemian literature at that early date is found in the writings of Thomas of Stitny, a man of noble birth, whose life was chiefly spent in producing theological and philosophical writings, the style and scope of which almost carry us down, in the search for a British counterpart, to the Puritan divines. The writer of the articles in the Westminster Review refers to the style of Stitny as “easy and flowing;