poetry began to appear in a national dress.  The Italian influence remained strikingly visible.  Blasius Darxich, Sigismund Menze, Mauro Vetranich, and Stephen Gozze (ob. 1576), are mentioned as the first Dalmatian poets.  The latter wrote a comic epic, the Dervishiade, which met with great success.  A poem of the same kind is Jegyupka, the Gipsy, by Andreas Giubronavich, printed at Venice 1559.  Dominic Zlatarich (ob. 1608) translated Tasso and the Electra of Sophocles, and was himself a lyric poet.

The annals of this period, towards the end of the sixteenth century, report likewise the name of a lady, Svietana Zuzerich, as an Illyrian poetess; called also Floria Zuzzeri, as an Italian poetess; for she wrote with success in both languages.  Several other ladies followed the example, as Lucrezia Bogashinovich, Katharina Pozzo di Sorgo, etc.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ragusa enjoyed peace, and a degree of wealth and prosperity most favourable to high attainments in science and literature.  The first Slavic theatre was founded here, and the dramatic art seems to have been considered so honourable, that even noblemen acted publicly; as is related of Junius Palmota, who died in 1657.  The noble names of Palmota or Palmotich, Gondola or Gondolich, for they appear alternately both in the Slavic and Italian form, are very frequent in Ragusian literature.  Junius Palmota wrote tragedies; selecting his subjects principally from Slavic history.  But his most esteemed production is a Slavic version of a great Latin epic on Christ, by M.H.  Vita, which may be considered as a kind of precursor to Klopstock’s Messiah.  John Gondola, a dramatic writer before him, translated Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered; and left many lyrical poems.

In the year 1667, a horrible earthquake in a few moments destroyed the prosperity of the state for whole centuries.  It was as if the genius of the Ragusian literature had been crushed under the ruins.  From that period we find all that relates to literature in a rapid decline.  The catastrophe itself, however, furnished the poets with a new subject.  In the same year, N. Bonus published a poem entitled, The city of Ragusa to her Rulers; and Jacob Palmota (ob. 1680) wrote an elegiac poem, The renovated Ragusa.  But the most interesting production of this period is a collection of national songs, published by the Franciscan monk, And.  Cacich Miossich.[23] This work, although executed with little critical taste or judgment, and disfigured by many interpolations, might have given to the literary world a foretaste of the treasures, which fifty years afterwards were to be discovered here.