the
new translation; the result of which was, as may easily be supposed,
the rejection of a measure which savoured so strongly of
Protestantism. From the time of this decision in A.D. 1754, nothing
was done to provide the catholic inhabitants of Dalmatia, Bosnia and
Slavonia with a version of the Bible, until at last a new translation,
the first satisfactory one in the language, made by the Franciscan
monk and professor Katanesich, was accepted and introduced in 1832 The
merit of having procured it to be printed and published, belongs to
the late primate of Hungary, cardinal Rudnay.[24]

The inconvenience of such an anarchical state of orthography, and
likewise in part of the grammar itself, must of course have been felt
very early; but it would seem that in this department also, the
Dalmatian writers acted with more zeal and diligence, than success.
The above-mentioned Barth. Cassio, and after him another Jesuit, J.
Micalia, endeavoured in the first half of the seventeenth century to
settle the orthography and subject it to fixed rules. Ardelio della
Bella, a member of the same order, published in 1728 a dictionary and
grammar, in which he abandoned the way opened by his predecessors,
without however finding a better one. Jos. Voltiggi endeavoured to
establish a third system of pronunciation and orthography; his
dictionary and grammar appeared in the year 1803. A few years later a
useful grammar was published by Appendini; also the great dictionary
of J. Stulli, a work of considerable merit, and far excelling all
previous works of the same kind.[25]

All the different systems and rules of orthography, exhibited and laid
down in these works, had unfortunately no permanent result. The
Dalmatians, the Slavonians, the Croats, and the Servians in Hungary,
whenever they used Latin letters, all continued to write each in their
own way. This continued until about twelve years ago; when new efforts
began to be made to unite all the different branches of the
Illyrico-Servians, and if possible also the Servians of the Greek
Church, in the use of one general system of orthography. We have seen
above the anarchy in respect to their literary language, which some
years before the two Servians Davidovitch and Vuk Stephanovitch had
found prevailing among their Cyrillic brethren; and what pains they
took to introduce the pure dialect of the people (essentially the
language of the Dalmatians) as the literary language of the whole
rac