Love and heroism, the principal subjects of all poetry, are also the most popular among the Slavi.  But one of the peculiarities of their poetry is, that these two subjects are kept apart more than among other nations.  While in the exploits of the Spanish heroes, which the popular Romances celebrate, love is so interwoven with heroism, and heroism with love, that we are not able to separate this two-fold exaltation of a generous mind, love is almost excluded from the heroic poems of the Slavi; or, at least, admitted only about in the same degree as in the epics of the ancients.  It is seldom, if ever, the motive of the hero’s actions.  We need then add nothing more, to describe the character of Slavic heroism.  It is never animated by romantic love; although sometimes, in the more modern epics of the Servians, by romantic honour.  In one of the modern Servian tales, perhaps about a century old, which describes a duel between a Dalmatian Servian and a Turk, a scene of the most perfect chivalry occurs.  The young Dalmatian captain, Vuk Jerinitch, having just reached manhood, inquires of the older captains, which of the Turks had most injured their country during the last invasion, while he was a child.  The old captains name to him Zukan, the Turkish standard bearer.  Vuk consequently challenges him, proposing at the same time, in true Oriental character, that, himself having a beautiful sister and the Turk a wife of equal beauty, both shall belong to the victor.  Zukan of course accepts the challenge.  Their meeting is in the best chivalric style; they demand of each other no pledge or oath of faith, but meet in Vuk’s tent with perfect confidence; they embrace and kiss each other, and make friendly inquiries after each other’s health.  The first hour of their meeting flies away in conviviality, and in admiration of the ladies.  At last the desire to gain the Christian girl induces the Turk to interrupt their drinking.  But, before they begin the fight, “they kiss each other on the cheeks, and forgive each other mutually their blood and death.”  This scene indeed has a decidedly Oriental costume; but the feelings, from which it results, are produced by as much of romantic exaltation as any Spanish romance could exhibit.

Goetze, in the introduction to his German translation of Russian popular ballads, observes:  “In the Russian love songs we meet with more softness of feeling than romantic delicacy.”  We do not perceive any marked difference in that respect, between the character of Russian and of other Slavic erotic songs; and apply therefore his remark to the whole race. Romantic delicacy we must not, in fact, expect to find; but often all the natural delicacy of warm, tender, devoted love; all the freshness of youthful, unsophisticated feelings; all the burning passion of Spanish love, with the same strong tincture of sensuality; though seldom, very seldom, that depth, that infiniteness of the same feeling, so affectingly expressed in more than one popular ballad of the Scandinavians, Germans, and British,—­that love which reaches far beyond the grave, and chains souls to each other even in different worlds.  Russian lovers, who are compelled by circumstances to leave their mistresses, give frequently the following or similar advice: