The most remarkable is the above-mentioned manuscript of Koeniginhof.  It contains, besides several epic songs partly complete and partly fragmentary, seven or eight charming lyric pieces.  The near relationship of the Slavic nations among each other, is exhibited in no feature more strikingly than in their national popular poetry, especially in the little lyric songs, the immediate effusion of their feelings, wishes, and cares; whilst epic poetry, which draws her materials from the external world, must hence, in every nation, be in some measure modified by their different fortunes and situations.  With the exception of this manuscript and a few scattered love-songs and tales, all we have from this early period is of a religious character, viz. a fragment of a history of Christ’s passion in rhymes, another of a legend of the twelve apostles, and a hymn on the merits of the Bohemian patron saint, Wenceslaus.  There is also a complete Psalter in Bohemian, with a whole series of hymns, or rather rhymed formularies, corresponding to those sung in the catholic church, viz a Te Deum,, an office for the dead, a prayer for the intercession of all saints, etc.  A piece in prose, entitled “The complaint of a lover on the banks of the Moldau,” a very rare appearance in those early times, was formerly considered as genuine, on the authority of Linde and Dobrovsky; but has since been proved to be spurious.  The first historians of Bohemia, Cosmas and Vincentius, born towards the middle of the eleventh century, wrote both of them in Latin.  The chronicle of the first is still extant.

During the fourteenth century the German influence increased so much, that the jealousy and impatience of a great part of the nation was powerfully excited.  The king kept a German body guard; German fashions in dress and manners prevailed at the court; and even in the year 1341, when the privileges of the city of Prague were first solemnly committed to writing, it was done in the German language.  Under the reign of Charles I, or the emperor Charles IV, for he united the two crowns on his head, Bohemia, as we have said, reached the highest point of its splendour.  He wisely limited the privileges of the Germans in his own kingdom; and reconciled the minds of the Bohemians by granting to them similar privileges in the German empire.  He honoured the Bohemian language so much as to recommend expressly, in the golden bull, to the sons of the Electors to learn it.  His capital, Prague, was like the apple of his eye; and he did all he could to add to its embellishments and magnificence.  Here he founded in the year 1348 the first Slavic university, on the plan of those of Paris and Bologna.  The influence of this institution, not merely on Bohemia, but on Germany and indeed all Europe, was decided.  From the time of its foundation until 1410, it was the general resort for students from among the Poles, Hungarians, Swedes, and Germans.  It was doubtless the wish to give it this very kind of universality, which induced Charles IV, in the statutes of the institution, to allow to the Bohemians only one suffrage in the senate, and the three others to foreigners.  We shall show in the sequel, with what jealousy this apparent preference was received by the natives, and what a violent reaction it caused in the Bohemian national feelings.