Page:Cheskian Anthology.pdf/61

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The appearance of John Hus[1] associated Bohemia with that general demand for reform which exerted its irresistible influences over the fifteenth


    most remarkable of the latter, being Wăda Wody s Winem, or the dispute between water and wine. Hanka informs me he has also had the good fortune to fall on in latin etymological lexicon composed by Solomon, bishop of Constance, who died in 920. The MS. was written in A. D. 1102, and contains more than fourteen hundred bohemian, and five hundred teutonic glosses; the bohemian throws much light on the slavonian mythology. Hanka means to publish this work. It is to be hoped, that no impediment will be thrown in his way, which one cannot but fear, from the arbitrary suppression of the fifth volume of his collection. It is not much to allow that those who have no hopes for the future, may be permitted to indulge in the memories of the past; else it had been better that these MSS. should still have slept in the darkness of a temporary obscurity, than have been disinterred by learned industry in order to be delivered over by timidity or tyranny to eternal oblivion.

  1. I give a fac simile of the hand-writing of John Hus, from a MS. existing at Prague.