DOBROVSKt

361

was republished in 1818 it appeared almost a new work. The book has become somewhat antiquated and incomplete, as so many Bohemian books have been redis-

covered since it appeared, but it still has considerable While these and other works of Dobrovsk^ were value. written in German, he employed the Latin language for In this, his most his Institutiones LingucB Slavicce Veteris. important work, Dobrovsk^, as in his grammar, paved the way for later workers. The Institutiones have been the foundation of the work of the many important Slav philologists of the present century. It has already been mentioned that Dobrovsk^ had no enthusiasm for the Bohemian language, to the development of which he so largely contributed. His early recollections carried him back to the time when it was little more than an idiom used by the peasantry in the outlying country districts of Bohemia, When, in the present century, the movement in favour of the national language acquired greater strength, Dobrovsky never sympathised with it. When the publication of the Casopis Musea Krdlovstvi CesMho ("Journal of the Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia") in Bohemian, as well as in German, was first discussed, Dobrovsky expressed the wish that the new journal should appear in German only. It must, in justice to Dobrovsky, be added that in the last years of his life he wrote a few Bohemian essays for the journal. They are, indeed, with a collection of letters, the only writings in the national language which he has left. Dobrovsk^'s critical nature and his thorough philological training induced him to deny from the time of its discovery the " MS. of genuineness of the Griineberg," ^ an opinion ^

See Chapter

I.