nd G. Babyl, authors of
theological commentaries, etc. Those Slovakian writers who in any
measure distinguished themselves, have been enumerated under their
proper heads in our sketch of the Bohemian literature.[60]

The Bohemian dialect, as we have mentioned repeatedly, is perfectly
_intelligible_ to the Slovaks. But as it is not to them the language
of common conversation, it cannot be _familiar_ to their minds. If, in
listening to their preachers in the churches, the people succeed in
straining up their minds sufficiently to enable them to follow the
course of the sermons and devotional exercises, it still seems rather
unnatural, that even their prayer books, destined for private use,
should not be written in their vernacular tongue; but that even
their addresses to the Most High, which, more than any thing else,
should be the free and natural effusions of their inmost feelings,
should require such an intellectual exertion and an artificial
transposition into a foreign clime. It is a singular fact, that,
whilst every where else Protestantism and the friends of the Bible
have advocated and attempted to raise the dialect of the people, in
opposition to a privileged idiom of the priesthood, among the Slovaks
the vindication of the vernacular tongue has been attempted by the
Romanists, and has met with strong opposition from the Protestants. In
the year 1718, Alex Macsay, a catholic clergyman, published sermons at
Tyrnau, written in the common Slovakian dialect. The Jesuits of Tyrnau
followed his example, in publishing books of prayers and several other
religious works, in a language which is rather a mixture of the
dialect of the people and the literary Bohemian language. During the
last ten years of the eighteenth century, a more successful attempt
was made to elevate the Slovakian dialect spoken on the frontiers of
Moravia, and which approaches the Bohemian language most, to the rank
of a literary language. At the head of this undertaking were the Roman
catholic curates Bajza, Fandli, and Bernolak, especially the last. A
society was formed, the members of which bound themselves to buy the
books written in Slovakish by Bernolak and his friends. The Romanists
proceeded in the work with great zeal and activity, and were
patronized by the cardinal Rudnay, primate of Hungary; who himself
published some of his orations held in the Slovakian dialect, and
caused a voluminous Slovakish dictionary, a posthumous work of
Bernola