“ Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart, is more important as a product of pure literature. All the other writers of this period are of little importance. The systematic efforts of the Hapsburgs to crush the Czechs were successful. Higher society became Germanized, the Czech language was heard only in out-of-the-way hamlets, and Czech books became a great rarity. The works of the Jesuit writers of the period, who employed the Czech language for religious propaganda among the masses—Sturm, Berlička, Steyer, and Koniaš—are full of barbarisms, monstrous forms and words. ”

“ Third Period (1620-1774) .—In the battle at the White Mountain in 1620, the Bohemians lost their political independence, and Ferdinand I. of Austria, seven years later, made Catholicism the State religion of Bohemia. The works of the Protestant writers that had made the ‘Golden Age’ so brilliant were now seized everywhere and destroyed. Nevertheless, it was during the opening years of this period that Czech literature reached its highest stage of purity and finish in the works of Karl Žerotin and Jan Komenský. ”

“ The famous Grüneberg manuscript (eighth or ninth century) , the Judgment of Libusha, and the Königinhof manuscript (thirteenth or fourteenth century) , discovered by Hanka in 1817, are the only remains in the native tongue which belong to this period, and their authenticity is somewhat doubtful. The influence of the Teutonic knights was growing rapidly among the natives, and the result was that until about the fourteenth century vernacular literature was entirely superseded by Latin. ”

“ Nicholas Dačicky (1555-1626) composed a satirical poem, Prostopravda, and many works of an historical character. Among the religious poets Jan (1500-72) , a Moravian bishop, deserves special mention. The greatest poet of the latter part of this period, which is known as the ‘Golden Age,’ was Simon Lomnický (1552- after 1622) . His works include didactic and satirical poems and sacred dramas. Chief among them are the satire Cupid's Arrow, for which the King, Rudolph II., ennobled him and granted him an annuity ”