Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations Part 20

[Footnote 25: See Macherzynski's _Geschichte der Luteinischen Sprache in Polen_, Cracow 1833. Dr. Connor in his History of Poland, 1698, speaking of the following period, says, that even the common people in Poland spoke Latin, and that his servant used to speak with him in that language. See Letters on Poland, Edinb. 1823 p 108.]

[Footnote 26: De originibus et rebus gestis Polonorum, lib. x.x.x.]

[Footnote 27: _Psalterz Dawidow s modlitwami_, 1555.]

[Footnote 28: The Polish works of this poet, who is still considered as the chief ornament of the Polish Parna.s.sus, were first collected in four volumes, Cracow 1584-90. After going through several editions, they have recently been printed at Breslau, 1894, in a stereotype edition. Bowring gives among his 'Specimens' some of the sweetest pieces of Kochanowski.]

[Footnote 29: The oldest edition extant of his Polish pastorals, was printed at Zamosc, 1614, under the t.i.tle _Sielanki_. They were last printed, together with other eclogues, in the collection of Mostowski, _Sielanki Polskie_, Warsaw 1805. There are some specimens of his poetry in Bowring's work.]

[Footnote 30: This latter was honoured by his countrymen with the t.i.tle of the Sarmatian Ovid; but his pieces, according to Bowring, are not only licentious, but also vulgar. See Specimen of the Polish Poets, p. 29.]

[Footnote 31: The same individual has been mentioned as a Bohemian writer; see above, p. 193.]

[Footnote 32, 33, 34: See above, p. 237, 238, n. 18.]

[Footnote 35: This work was first printed at Cracow in 1597, under the t.i.tle _Kronika Polska_. The first part of it was republished at Warsaw in 1832, forming the sixth volume of the great collection of ancient Polish authors published by the bookseller Galezowski.]

[Footnote 36: For more complete information respecting the writers of this period, see Bentkowaki's _Hist. lit. Pol_ Vol. I. Schaffarik's _Gechichte_, etc.]

[Footnote 37: We mean the direct male descendants of Jagello; for descendants by the female and collateral lines occupied the throne after Stephen Bathory. Poland had never been by law an hereditary kingdom; but in most cases one of the sons or brothers of the last king was elected.]

[Footnote 38: These _pacta conventa_, to which numerous articles were afterwards added, not only limiled the king in his quality as king, but even also as a private man, in a degree to which no freeman would willingly submit. For example, he was not allowed to marry except with the consent of the diet; and as each single nuntius had the right to oppose and render void the resolutions of the united estates by his _liberum veto_, the king could not marry whenever it occurred to any one of them to withhold his consent. In 1669 it was resolved, that no king should be allowed to abdicate.]

[Footnote 39: _Korona Polska_, Lemberg 1728-1743.]

[Footnote 40: In 1764; it was the first periodical ever published in Poland.]

[Footnote 41: See page 227 above.]

[Footnote 42: The Polish serfs were indeed never regular slaves; but merely _glebae adscripti_, i.e. they could not be sold separately as mere things, but only with the soil they cultivated, which they had no right to leave. They were not reduced even to this state before the fifteenth or sixteenth century; for one of the statutes of Casimir the Great allows them the privilege of selling their property and leaving whenever they were ill treated. Of the present state of the Polish peasantry, the author of "Poland under the dominion of Russia," (Bost.

1834,) says: "The Polish peasant might perhaps be about as free as my dog was in Warsaw; for I certainly should not have prevented the animal from learning, had he been so inclined, some tricks by which he could earn the reward of an extra bone. The freedom of the wretched Polish serfs is much the same as the freedom of their cattle; for they are brought up with as little of human cultivation," etc. p. 165. And again: "The Polish serf is in every part of the country extremely poor, and of all the living creatures I have met with in this world, or seen described in books of natural history, he is the most wretched." p. 176.]

[Footnote 43: Lemberg indeed can hardly be called a Polish university.

All its professors are Germans, and the lectures are delivered in Latin or German. It has only three faculties, viz. the philosophical, theological, and juridical. For medicine it has only a preparatory school, the course being finished at Vienna. Among the 65 medical students of 1832, there were 41 Jews. The university had in that year, in all, 1291 students. For the theological and juridical courses, which, according to law, comprise each four years, a previous preparation of two years spent in philosophical studies is required by the government. Thus the regular course of an Austrian student lasts six years. The same measures were taken to Germanize Cracow during the Austrian administration; but when in 1815 Cracow became a free city, it parted with all its German professors, and became again a genuine Polish university.]

[Footnote 44: From the account given of the state of the Polish common people in note 42 above, we must conclude that this number is very small. Mr. Ljach Szyrma, the author of Letters on Poland, (Edinb.

1823,) says: "The lower cla.s.ses, unfortunately, do not enjoy the advantage of being proportionally benefited by the learning requisite to their social condition. The parish schools are not sufficient to improve them in this respect; and the village schools, upon which their hopes chiefly rest, _are not numerous_."]

[Footnote 45: Witwicki in _Wieczory pielgrzyma_, Paris 1837.]

[Footnote 46: P. 254.]

[Footnote 47: His works, which have never been collected, are enumerated in Bentkowski's History of Polish literature. Konarski was the first who ventured publicly to a.s.sail the _liberum veto_.]

[Footnote 48: Nancy 1733.]

[Footnote 49: This celebrated library was transferred to St.

Petersburg at the dismemberment of Poland, and had not yet been restored.]

[Footnote 50: The Czartoryskis may justly be called the Polish Medici, from the liberal patronage which the accomplished members of this family have ever given to talent and literary merit. Their celebrated seat, Pulawi, the subject of many songs, and also of an episode in Delille's Jardins, was destroyed by the Russians in the late war, and its literary treasures are said to have been carried to St.

Petersburg.]

[Footnote 51: The t.i.tle of the former work is _O wymowie i stylu_, Warsaw 1815-16. Another work is _Pochwaly, mowy i rozprowy_, i.e.

Eulogies, Speeches, and Essays, among which are nine on Polish literature, Warsaw 1816. Stanislaus Potocki was also the princ.i.p.al mover in the publication of the splendid work _Monumenta regum Poloniae Cracoviensia_, Warsaw 1822. Stanislaus Kostka P. must not be confounded with Stanislaus Felix P. his cousin, one of the most obstinate advocates of the ancient const.i.tution and its corruptions, who sold his country to Russia.]

[Footnote 52: His complete works are to be found in the great collection of count Mostowski, Warsaw 1804-5, 12 volumes. They appeared in 1824 at Breslau in a stereotype edition, in six volumes.

Poetical works, Warsaw 1778.]

[Footnote 53: Lelewel is the author of quite a number of historical productions of importance; and some others he published or translated.

A catalogue of his works cannot be expected here. The most celebrated are his volume on the primitive Lithuanians (Wilna 1808); on the condition of Science and Arts in Poland before the invention of printing; on the Geography of the Ancients; on the Commerce of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans; on the history of the ancient Indians; on the discoveries of the Carthaginians and Greeks (Warsaw 1829), etc. Also a Polish Bibliography (Warsaw 1823-1826); Monuments of the language and const.i.tution of Poland, Warsaw 1824, etc.]

[Footnote 54: See the preceding note.]

[Footnote 55: _O Slawianach i ich pobratymcach_, Warsaw 1816.]

[Footnote 56: Bentkowski's _Historya literatury Polsk_. Warsaw 1814, contains a catalogue of all works published on Polish literature, to 1814; sec Vol. I p. 1-73.]

[Footnote 57: Krasicki's complete works were published by Dmochowski, Warsaw 1803-4. A stereotype edition appeared at Breslau in 1824.]

[Footnote 58: P. 221 Niemcewicz'a works have not yet been collected.

Of his _Spiewy historyene_, or 'Historical Songs,' Warsaw 1819, Bowring gives some specimens. These songs were set to music by distinguished Polish composers, especially ladies; and, on account of their deep patriotic interest, have reached a higher degree of popularity than any other Polish work. They were written at the instigation of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Science. Besides his two historical works, _Dzicie panowania Zygmunta III_, or Reign of Sigismund III, Warsaw 1819, and _Zbior pamietnikow_, etc. a collection of imprinted doc.u.ments, Warsaw 1822; and his large historical novel _Jan z Teczyna_, Warsaw 1825; Niemcewicz published _Leyba i Szora_, or Letters of Polish Jews, Warsaw 1821, presenting an ill.u.s.tration of their situation. His most recent production, an elegiac poem, was published at Leipzig 1833. See below, p. 286.]

[Footnote 59: The fourth volume appeared at Paris; where also his earlier poetry was reprinted in 1828 under the t.i.tle _Poezye Adama Mickiewicza_.]

[Footnote 60: Author of the work _Die Philosophie in ihrem Verhaltnisse zum Leben ganzer Vlker_, Erlangen 1822.]

[Footnote 61: The first wrote _Grundlage der universellen Philosophie_, Karlsruh 1837; the second, _Prolegomena zur Historiosophie_, Berlin 1838.]

[Footnote 62: See Dr. Connor's History of Poland, 1698. Even as late as the close of the seventeenth century, the Poles were barbarians enough to look upon the profession of a physician with contempt. They had however in earlier times some very celebrated physicians, as Martin of Olkusc, Felix of Lowicz, and Struthius, who was called to Spain to save the life of Philip II, and even to the Turkish sultan Suliman II.]

[Footnote 63: Page 278.]

[Footnote 64: This code is frequently called the code of Leo Sapieha, the sub-chancellor of Lithuania, who in A.D. 1588 translated it from the White Russian into the Polish language.]

[Footnote 65: See _Revue Encyclopedique_, Oct. 1827, p. 219.]

[Footnote 66: See Letters on Poland, p. 103.]

[Footnote 67: Breslau 1821. The same author published John Sobieski's Letters, a work read throughout all Europe in its French translation by count Plater and Salvandy. A whole series of _Memoirs_, among which are some of great importance for Polish history, for instance those of Pa.s.sek, of Wybicki, of Kolontaj, etc. owe their publication to the generous liberality of this true n.o.bleman.]

[Footnote 68: We do not know exactly from what point the Polish literary historians _after_ Bentkowski date the period of the present literature; as we have not been able to get a view of Wiszniewski's _Historya literatury Polskiej_, Cracow 1840. We are even not certain, whether the works on literary history, which J.B. Rakowiecki and Prof.

Aloys Osinski were said to be preparing about the same time, have ever appeared.]

[Footnote 69: _Historya prawodawstw Slowanskich_, Warsaw 1832-1835.]

[Footnote 70: _Pamietniki o djezach, pismiennictwie i prawodawstwie Slowian_, Warsaw 1838. A German translation appeared in 1842, at St.

Petersburg: _Denkwurdigkeiten uber die Begebnisse, das Schriftwesen, und die Gesetzgebung der Slaven_.--The same author published more recently a work on the ancient history of Poland and Lithuania: _Pierwotne dzieje Polski i Litwy_, etc. Warsaw 1846.]