and later on, while attending conscientiously to his public duties as professor, he was at the same time always busy with his pen.
As early as 1859 he published his first original attempt, a short novel, which was followed the year after by an essay entitled, Poet and Musician. Then there was a long pause of ten years, which, however, was filled up with very diligent literary work. From 1871 till his death his name was constantly before the reading public. Every year stories from his pen appeared in various periodicals; a volume of poems came out in 1874; and no less than eleven dramas (four tragedies and seven comedies) were found among his literary remains, besides several librettos for musical composition, and other poetical pieces. Some of his poems found an able composer in his friend L. E. Me̓chura, whose life and position in the Bohemian musical world Šmilovský made the subject of a separate essay in 1871.
His dramas are the least known; only three of them found their way to the stage; the rest have not been even printed yet.
His poems met with a much warmer reception, but the field in which he really excelled was fiction.
No less than twenty-one different tales of various lengths issued from his prolific pen, and were published between 1871 and 1884, the last of them after his death.
Of these, our translation Heavens! (Nebesa) and another story about the time of the awakening of the Bohemian nation, Za ranních červánkŭv (The Morning Dawn), the plot of which is woven round the person of the celebrated grammarian Dobrovský, are considered by many critics to be the best.
All Šmilovský’s novels are founded on real life and
