had died. His own death soon followed on the twenty-ninth of August, 1856.
In the first years of this period Václav B. Nebeský wrote poetry of a strain whose innate beauty alone makes it valuable, to be sure, but whose chief interest rests in the fact that it became a sort of standard of modern tendencies for all the younger poets as Jan Neruda himself acknowledges. He encouraged a whole host of young writers as for instance Němcová to earnest literary effort.
Karel Sabina wrote short stories and novels in which sociological questions are brought up as in his “Synové Světla” (Sons of Light) which was later published under the title “Na Poušti” (On the Desert) and also in his story of political prisoners “Oživené Hroby” (Enlivened Graves). He wrote clever librettos for a number of popular operas among them Smetana’s “Prodaná Nevěsta” (The Bartered Bride) in which the Czech prima donna, Emma Destinnova, has sung the leading part in American performances.
Jan Neruda is usually classed with Vitězslav Hálek because they were the leaders of the enthusiastic literary men of the period—in the main, youths of twenty or thereabout who devoted every ounce of energy to their muse and their nation. They made the new literature reflect their own ideals of social equality, religious liberty, better advantages and fairer treatment of the laboring classes, emancipation of women, free self-expression.
