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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE
consented, but he ventured to remonstrate when objections were raised against his account of the courageous demeanour of Hus when before the Council. He was
instructed to state that Hus had "appeared irresolute" when brought before his judges. Palack^ remarked that this statement would be in contradiction with the passage quoted above which he had been ordered to insert. The ignorance of the censor is proved by the fact that when Palack^ quoted Poggio Bracciolini's account of the death of Jerome of Prague, he was unaware of the existence of the well-known Italian humanist, and requested to be informed who he was. He also expressed doubts as to the authenticity of the letter to Lionardo Aretino in which that account is contained, though it had then already been frequently printed, and is quoted by numerous Protestant and Catholic writers, including Pope Pius II. Palack^ lived to see the abolition of censure, and to republish in their original form the volumes of his History that he had been obliged to submit to it. Political events and the ever-increasing mass of materials, which of course proportionately increased Palack^'s labours, delayed the progress of the History, and it was only in 1867 that the second part of the fifth volume, which reaches to the accession of the House of Hapsburg to the Bohemian throne in 1526, was published. Bohemian historians generally end their work with the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, and this was no doubt His remark, quoted above, proves Palack^'s intention. that he never intended to write the history of Bohemia during and after the Thirty Years' War. In 1861 he had, however, already formed the decision to end his narrative with the year 1526, and he informed the Estates
