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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN

LITERATURE

vers d' occasion as they may be called, which he sent to his patrons, the Bohemian nobles. In Bohemia, as in Italy and in other countries, it was then the fashion that im-

portant domestic events, such as marriages or deaths, which occurred in noble families should be celebrated in verse, and many poets, of whom Lomnicky was one, obtained rich gifts from their patrons in remuneration of verses of this description. Lomnicky is also interesting as being the type of a very numerous class of Bohemians — particularly of the middle class — during the last years of independence. Many Bohemians shared Lomnicky's sensual and material view of life, and his inability to feel any genuine political This fact indeed convicts as or religious enthusiasms. utter idealists, and therefore unpractical politicians, men such as Harrant and Budova, who believed that their countrymen were prepared to sacrifice their lives for a Church similar to that of Geneva, and for a constitution similar to that of Venice. Though perhaps only Lomnicky welcomed in 1619 Frederick of the Palatinate, and " celebrated in 1621 the "just punishment of his adherents, yet the feeling of indifference to everything beyond personal, mainly material, advantages which Lomnicky so cynically displayed, was shared by many Bohemians at the moment when they were confronted with the most decisive crisis in their history. Lomnicky is a voluminous writer, and, as already menBesides the tioned, found it advantageous to be so. numerous gifts which he received from the noble patrons to whom he dedicated his works, he was also ennobled by Rudolph II. in recognition of his poetical works. Of his larger works, one of the earliest is his Advice to a Young Landowner (or farmer), which has always been