SCHAFARIK (

See also:

• CZECH (in Bohemian, Cech)

Czech, Safa,Ik), PAVEL JOSEF (1795–1861)  , Slavonic philologist, was born of Slovak parents at Kobeljarova, a village of northern Hungary, where his father was a Protestant clergyman . His first production was a volume of poems in Czech entitled The Muse of Tatra with a Slavonic Lyre (Levocza, 1814) . In 1815 he began a course of study at the university of Jena, and while there translated into Czech the Clouds of Aristophanes and the Maria Stuart of Schiller . In 1817 he removed to Prague and joined the literary circle of which Dobrovsky, Jungmann and Hanka were members . From 1819 to 1833 he was head master of the high school at Neusatz in the south of Hungary . There he studied Servian literature and antiquities, acquired many rare books and manuscripts, and published a collection of Slovak folk-songs in collaboration with Kollar and others (1823–1827) . In 1826 his Geschichte der slawischen Sprache and Literatur nach alien Mundarten appeared at Budapest (and ed., 1869) . This book was the first attempt to give any-thing like a systematic account of the Slavonic languages as a whole . In 1833 he returned to Prague, where he spent the remainder of his life . There he published his Serbische Lesekorner oder historisch-kritische Beleuchtung der Serbischen Mundart, and in 1837 his great work Slovanske Staroitnosti (" Slavonic Antiquities ") . The " Antiquities " have been translated into Polish, Russian and German; a second edition (1863) was edited by J . Jirecek .

In 184o he published in

conjunction with Palacky Die ditesten Denkmdler der bohmischen Sprache . In 1837 poverty compelled him to accept the uncongenial office of censor of Czech publications, which he abandoned in 1847 on becoming custodian of the Prague public library . In 1842 he published his Slovansk9 Ndrodopis, in which he sought to give a complete account of Slavonic ethnology . He was also for some time conductor of the " Journal " of the Bohemian Museum, and edited the first volume of the Vybor, or selections from old Czech writers, which appeared under the auspices of the Prague literary society in 1845 . To this he prefixed a grammar of the Old Czech language, Pocttkovd starobeske mluvnice . In 1848 he was made professor of Slavonic philology in the university of Prague, but resigned in 1849 . He was then made keeper of the university library . In 1857 he published Glagotitische Fragmente in collaboration with Hoffer; but in the same year, as a result of overwork, ill health and family anxieties, he became insane . He was nevertheless continued in his appointment until his death in 1861: Schafarik's collected works, Seb"ane Spisy, were published at Prague . 1862–1865; his Geschichte der sudslawischen Literatur was edited by Jirecek in 3 vols . (1864–1865) .