The recent development of the Slav races is so little known in England, that these lines will probably appear to many readers far more absurd than they really are. Professor Léger, who has devoted his life to the study of Slavic history and literature, and is wondrously in touch with the national feeling, writes of the sonnet which I have just quoted: "These lines were written about the year 1830. Is it necessary to state to how great an extent the predictions have been fulfilled? The Slav language, then considered a jargon of peasants, is now the recognised language of the courts of St. Petersburg, Belgrade, Sophia, and Cettigne, of the parliaments and representative bodies of Prague, Brünn, and Agram, of the universities of Russia, Bohemia, Poland, and Illyria. . . . Russian is ardently studied at Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and Budapest. Muscovite novels invade the libraries of Paris."[1]
The two last cantos of Kollar's great poem have little literary merit, and their always rather local interest has, as I have already mentioned, decreased with the lapse of time. I shall, however, translate the last sonnet of the fifth canto, which forms the conclusion of the whole work. Mina, in heaven, addresses thus the Slavs who are still on earth:—
"Oh you, brothers and sweet sisters who yet live in the world,
grant me willingly your ear that I may briefly instruct you.
"Beware of that smooth path which the devil has interwoven
with nets that he may entangle the souls of traitors in his deceitful
snares.
- ↑ This was written some years ago, when the enthusiasm for the works of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Tourguenev, Goncharov, and others was at its height in Paris.
