59
The chronicle of Prokop (Prokopowa nová Kronyka), which Dobrowsky places in the middle of the 15th century, is another of the readable poetical productions of this period. It is the first in Hanka's collection, and consists of 1,100 octosyllabic verses. It was written by the historiographer of Prague.
The dispersion of the catholics under Ferdinand the 2nd, conveniently forms the modern boundary of the second epoch of bohemian literature. Its poetry is tinged with that religious feeling which characterised the age. The priesthood, who became the instructors of others, as they were the sole depositaries of instruction, gave to the literature which they created a superstitious and degraded tone, and swept away with their torrents of religious and sacred canticles—their dull, dubious and rhymed morality—almost all of natural feeling and generous enthusiasm. All Bohemia was possessed with the spirit of religious zeal—a spirit towering over and destroying every other. From the time of John Hus, down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, very
