THE BOOK-DESTROYERS

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of course, mian volumes — up to the year 1760. It only possible to attempt conjectures as to the value of the lost works, but Bohemian writers agree in thinking that many had considerable historical merit. Second, of course, to non-Roman theological writings, the bookhistorical destroyers relentlessly pursued all works of character which might suggest to the Bohemian people the contrast between their glorious past and their present servile and miserable condition. may be mentioned as proof of this, that even the historical work of Pope Pius II. (^nasas Sylvius) which deals with Bohemia was ordered to be destroyed. The numerous emigrants from Bohemia continued indeed for some time, as already mentioned, to write in the national language, and only the death of Komensky marks the cessation of such writing. In Bohemia itself, from the fatal year 1620 to the end of the eighteenth century, no book appeared in the native language that worthy of general notice. Jungmann,^ in his patriotic endeavour to conceal the complete cessation of Bohemian literature, enumerates many writers of prayer-books, collections of sermons, and calendars pubHshed at this period. Whatever historical and philological value such writings may have, they do not belong to literature. The nobles and the educated classes in Bohemia at this period wrote — as far as they wrote at all — in German curious to note that Bohemian conor in Latin. tinued to be spoken long after had ceased to be written among all classes of the population. When, in 1697, Peter the Grea,t visited Prajue^ he was able to converse~with the~nobles in his" own language, so similar to This would have been impossible that of Bohemia. See later.