Page:The Queens Court Manuscript with Other Ancient Bohemian Poems, 1852, Cambridge edition.djvu/16

of the Bohemian Museum, but also upon the course and progress of science and literature in the country. Inspired by the spirit of such men, and in imitation of their great examples, he formed the resolution to devote, proportionably to his attainments and powers, all his energies to the service of the Bohemian literature, and with excellent tact directed his especial attention to the hitherto neglected monuments of the oldest poëtical literature of the Bohemians, which eventually, being actively supported by Dobrowsky, he gradually published in all their manifold branches with the greatest fulness and completeness. At the beginning of the year 1817 he had already thoroughly searched all the libraries at Prague and the surrounding country, examined the oldest Bohemian Manuscripts, and copied out the pieces suitable for his collection, and in that year appeared the first volume of his collection under the title Starobylá Skládanie, i.e. Ancient Bohemian Poetry. This work he afterwards continued and closed with the fifth volume in the year 1823. He has also amongst other things composed and published a volume of poems of considerable merit, which has now reached the fifth edition. It was P. Hanka’s good fortune, a reward as it were for his patriotic exertions in the cause of his country’s literature, almost by