sionary in India, but he soon abandoned this intention and devoted himself to the study of Slavic antiquity. In 1779 he made his appearance in criticism with a periodical which set itself the task of telling “the truth, the naked, unvarnished truth” without regard for persons. He at once attracted attention by his sharp, critical acumen. His main interest lay in the purification of the Čech language and the forination of a literary norm. In 1792 his desire to reconstruct the Slavic past took him on a long journey to the libraries of Sweden and Russia, and even to the Caucasus, where he had expected to find some indications of a Čech origin. In the same year appeared his “History of the Bohemian Language and Literature,” in which he described the struggles of the Čech language against the German and Latin from the time of Hus until his day, and showed what relation it bore to the other Slavic languages. The effect of this work upon the nationalistic feeling was very great. Especially his grammar of the Čech language which he published in 1808 formed the basis for all Slavic grammars written in the first half of the nineteenth century. Dobrovský was a voluminous writer, and his scientific correspondence, lately edited by Jagić, contains an immense amount of material which throws a light upon the history of the Slavic renascence.
