It would be still more unpardonable to overlook the celebrated philologer, Father Joseph Dobrowsky, who, although born in Raab, in Hungary, was of a Bohemian family, and devoted himself especially to the literature and language of his nation. He had just entered the Jesuit society at Brunn at the moment of the suppression of the order. Repairing to Prague, he applied himself for a time to the study of the Oriental languages, but eventually concentrated all his energies on the history and language of Bohemia. His works upon Bohemian history and antiquities fill many volumes; and his Slavonic Grammar may be regarded as a classical work, not only in reference to his native language, but to the whole Slavonian family. Father Dobrowsky survived till the year 1829, engaged until the very time of his death in active projects for the cultivation of the language and literature of the country of his adoption. But probably the most remarkable name among Bohemian linguists is that of Father Dobrowsky’s friend, the poet Wenceslaus Hanka, born at Horeneyes in 1791. Hanka’s love of languages was first stirred while he was tending sheep near his native village, by the opportunity which he had of learning Polish and Servian from some soldiers of these races being quartered upon his father’s farm. When he grew somewhat older, his parents, in order to save him from the chances of military conscription, (from which, in Bohemia, scholars are exempted) sent him to school; and he afterwards entered the University of Prague, and subsequently that of Vienna. On the foundation of the Bohemian Museum at Prague, he was appointed its librarian, through the recommendation of Father Dobrowsky; and from that time he devoted himself almost entirely to the antiquities, literature, and language of his native country. Besides his own original compositions, Hanka’s name has obtained considerable celebrity in connexion with the controversy about the genuineness of the early Bohemian poems known under the title of “Kralodvor,”—a controversy which, although it has ended differently, was for a time hardly less animated than those regarding the Ossian and Rowley MSS. in England. Notwithstanding the variety of Hanka’s pursuits, and his especial devotion to his own language, his acquisitions in languages have been most various and extensive. He is described in the “Oesterreichische National Encyclopædie” as “master of eighteen languages.”[233] * * * * *