Among the Dalmatian clergy, there were a few who united a real interest for the preservation of their language and for science in general.  Raph.  Levakovitch improved the breviary in 1648, in respect to language; the archbishop Vincenz Zmajevitch, ob. 1771, a great patron of the literature of his country, founded a hundred years later a theological seminary in Zara.  Matthias Caraman, on occasion of a new edition of the missal by the Propaganda in 1741, undertook a fundamental revision and correction of it.  The Propaganda also founded a Slavic professorship in the Collegia Urbano; and for the benefit of this Society a new translation of the whole Bible was resolved upon, which however has never been published.  A notice of the exertions of the priest Rosa belongs rather to the history of Dalmatian secular literature.

b) SECULAR LITERATURE.

It is not certain at what time, nor by whom, the Latin letters were first adopted for the Servian language.  The earliest teachers of the occidental portion of that people having been Romish priests, they of course used their own letters for writing such Slavic words or names as occasion required.  The Latin alphabet probably came into use without any particular pains, long before the introduction of the Glagolitic letters.  These, in their awkward hieroglyphic form, were little adapted to supersede the Latin forms.  The example of the Poles and Bohemians could only encourage the first Dalmatian writers to continue in the same course; although each of these nations follows a different system of pronouncing the same letters.  The orthography of the Dalmatians remained, however, for a long time entirely unsettled:  and is so still in some measure.  A greater difficulty arose from the absurd practice of the Slavonians and Croatians, who, although speaking and writing the same language, yet write and print it each according to a different system of combination; thus limiting the perusal of their own scanty productions almost exclusively to the few readers of their small provinces respectively, whilst the remainder of their countrymen are hardly able to understand them.  This division, however, compels us likewise to separate in our sketch the literature of the Dalmatians proper, and that of the catholic Slavonians.

Literature of Dalmatia Proper.

The neighbourhood of the Italians exercised in very early times a happy influence on the literature of the Dalmatians.  The small republic of Ragusa, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was at the zenith of its splendour and welfare.  Celebrated Italians were teachers in her schools; and the persecuted Greeks, Lascaris, Demetrius Chalcondylas, Emanuel Marulus, and several others, celebrated over all Europe for their learning, found an asylum within her walls.  Thus the treasures of the classics and of the Italian middle ages became familiar to the noble youths of Ragusa, until, in the beginning of the sixteenth century,