be philologically and historically traced back to the
fourteenth century, after having given occasion to a passionate
conflict in the Slavic literary world, was finally published by
Kopitar in a complete and erudite edition, as the most ancient
monument of the Polish language.[14]

All other Polish manuscripts of those times are fragments; documents
relating to suits of law, translations of statutes issued in Latin,
the ten commandments in verse, a translation of one of Wickliffe's
hymns, etc.

The orthography of the language, and especially the adoption of the
Latin alphabet, seems to have troubled the few writers of this period
exceedingly. They appear to have founded their principles alternately
on the Latin, the Bohemian, and the German methods of combining
letters; an inconsistency, which adds greatly to the difficulties of
modern Slavic etymology.[15] In 1828 a remarkable manuscript was
published under the title, _Pamientniki Janozara_, or Memoirs of a
Janissary. It was the journal of a Polish nobleman, who had been
induced by circumstances to enter the Turkish army during the siege
and conquest of Constantinople, an event which took place A.D. 1453.
This interesting document of a language, that is so remarkably poor in
ancient monuments, was no longer intelligible to the common Polish
reader. It was necessary to add a version in modern Polish in order to
make it understood.

Annalists of Polish history, who wrote in Latin, were not wanting in
this period. Sig. Rositzius, Dzierzva,[16] and more especially John
Dlugosz, bishop of Lemberg, wrote histories and chronicles of
Poland; and the work of the latter is still considered as highly
valuable.

THIRD PERIOD.

_From Sigismund I, to the establishment of the schools of the Jesuits
in Cracow. A.D._. 1505 _to A.D_. 1622.

In northern climates, the bright and glowing days of summer follow in
almost immediate succession a long and gloomy winter, without allowing
to the attentive mind of the lover of nature the enjoyment of
observing, during a transient interval of spring, the gradual
development of the beauty of the earth. Thus the flowers of Polish
literature burst out from their buds with a rapidity unequalled in
literary history, and were ripened into fruit with the same prodigious
celerity.

The university of Cracow had been reinstituted under Jagello in A.D.
1400, and organized after the model of that of Prague. Although the
most flourishing period o