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, 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 Dalmatia