Česká” (Mother of Čechia), “Česká Včela” (Czech Bee), “Krok,” “Květy České” (Czech Blossoms) and “Czechoslav” gathered and presented to the public the really worthy writings of that and preceding periods.
Among the chief writers in this significant era certain men are representative.
Prof. Jan Nejedlý was the successor of Pelcl in the chair of the Czech language and literature at the University of Prague. Nejedlý’s chief service does not rest so much in his worthy translations into Czech of the Iliad and of modern writings such as Young’s “Night-Thoughts,” but rather in his assembling in his quarterly publication “The Czech Herald” all the older authors and of practically all the younger exponents of romanticism.
Joseph Jungmann, was the composer of the first Czech sonnets in which he sang of love, patriotism, public events, of the chivalrous deeds of the early Czechs, of the ideals of Slav unity. A whole school of poets clustered about Jungmann and followed his leadership. He translated into richly flowing Czech many works of Oliver Goldsmith, Alexander Pope, Gray, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Chateaubriand and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” A monumental “Dictionary of the Czech Language and its Relationships to the other Slavic Tongues” is the master work of Jungmann’s life. It was the labor of fully thirty-five years and ordinarily would have occupied the time of entire faculties of universities. It was published in October, 1834.
