Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/88

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"OF GENERAL CHRISTIAN MATTERS"
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serious faults in another (servant whom you take in the place of the former one). Thus the tilter must in tournaments overlook some faults in his charger, if but he is on the whole serviceable."

Štitný's work, like those of all moralists of all periods, contains many reflections on the vanity of the female sex. He writes: "St. John Chrysostom tells us that if a man has a dissipated wife, he should not forbid her everything at a time, lest she become refractory, but from those things that are, as it were, most serious, from those let him first try to dissuade her. If she paints herself, then remark before her what a shameful thing it is to grease yourself in a nasty manner, or to cram the hair of others on your head; (also remark to her), often one thus acquires shame while wishing to receive honours. If wise men remark these things on her, they will take her for a mad woman, and other women, who perhaps have some grudge against her, will, even though they praise her, betray her and make fun of her, and often her own servants will be obliged to hide themselves from shame of this (their mistress's appearance). In fact, while wishing to appear young, she becomes aged in consequence of this painting."

The leading idea of the fourth book Of General Christian Matters is one which we meet with very often in Štitný's works, but which he has perhaps developed here more clearly than elsewhere. It is the mystic idea of the analogy which, according to Štitný, exists between the different conditions of men and the various choirs of angels. He writes: "It is my duty—as indeed I promised in the preface to these books—to explain in this my fourth book in what manner the conditions of men