there followed a literary
lethargy. A very pernicious influence is also ascribed, by the
literary historians of Poland, to the Jesuits; although this order is
in general disposed to favour the cultivation of science. Under
Sigismund III, they were shrewd enough to make themselves gradually
masters of nearly all the colleges; and after a long and obstinate
struggle, even the university of Cracow had to submit. According to
Bentkowski, it was principally by their influence, that the tone of
panegyric and of bombast was introduced, which for nearly a hundred
and fifty years disgraced the Polish literature. The tastelessness of
this style reached its highest point under John Sobieski; when the
panegyrics with which this victorious captain was hailed by his
courtiers, became the model for all similar productions. The fashion,
first introduced at the close of the preceding period, of
interspersing the Polish language with Latin words and phrases, became
during the present more and more predominant; and was at length
carried so far as to give even to Polish words a false Latin sound, by
means of a Latin termination. French, German, and Italian forms of
expression soon obtained the same right. But what was still worse, and
what indeed affected the language most of all, was the fact, that even
the natural structure and well established syntax of the Polish
language had to give place to an injudicious imitation of foreign
idioms. Thus the very circumstance of its great pliancy, one of its
principal excellencies, became a source of its corruption.

Poland, moreover, at a time when the minds of the rest of Europe were
tolerably pacified in a religious respect, became the scene of
theological controversies full of sophistry and bitterness, the
natural consequence of the incipient oppression of the dissidents. The
literature was overwhelmed with pamphlets, stuffed with a shallow
scholastic erudition, and written in a style both bombastic and
vulgar. But the influence of the Jesuits was not limited to literature
and science; it had a still more unhappy result in its active
consequences. Poland became also during this century the theatre of a
religious persecution, less authorized by even the semblance of law
than any which had before, or has since, occurred in other countries.
The Arians or Unitarians, after having been for more than sixty years
tacitly included in the general appellation of _dissidents_, had to
sustain between the