Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations Part 2

[Footnote 8: _Glagolita Clozia.n.u.s_, Vindob. 1836.]

[Footnote 9: Vol. II. p. 1610 sq.]

[Footnote 10: Schaffarik in his _Slavic Ethnography_, published nearly twenty years after his "History of the Slavic Language and Literature," omits the word "North," and divides the Slavi into the "_Western_," and "_South-Eastern"_ nations. He must mean the _Western_, and the _Southern_ AND _Eastern_.].

[Footnote 11: We acknowledge, however, that even this latter appellation admits of some restriction in respect to the Slovenzi or Windes of Carniola and Carinthia; who, notwithstanding their rather Western situation, belong to the Eastern race.]

[Footnote 12: By Kopitar; see the _Wiener Jahrbucher_, 1822, Vol. XVII.

Kastanica, Sitina, Gorica, and Prasto, are Slavic names. There is even a place called [Greek: Sklabochori], _Slavic village_. Leake in his Researches observes that Slavic names of places occur throughout all Greece.]

[Footnote 13: The affinity of the Slavic and Greek languages it has recently been attempted to prove in several works. Dankovsky in his work, _Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven_, Presburg 1828, contends that a knowledge of the Slavic language is of the highest importance for the Greek scholar, as the only means by which he may be enabled to clear up obscure pa.s.sages and to ascertain the signification of doubtful words. Among the historical proofs, he furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of striking a.n.a.logy. "Of three sisters," he observes, "_one_ kept faithful to her mother tongue--the Slavic language; the _second_ gave to that common heritage the highest cultivation--the Greek language; and the _third_ mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom--the Latin language." A work of the same tendency has been published in the Greek language, by the Greek priest Constantine, Vienna 1828. It contains a vocabulary of 800 pages of _Russian_ and Greek words, corresponding in sound and meaning.--That these views are not new, is generally known; although they hardly ever have been carried so far, except perhaps by the author of the History of Russia, Levesque, who considers the Latins as a Slavic colony; or by Solarich, who derived all modern languages from the Slavic. Gelenius in his _Lexicon Symphonum_, 1557, made the first etymological attempt in respect to the Slavic languages. In modern times, great attention has been paid to Slavic etymology by Dobrovsky, Linde, Adelung, Bantkje, Fritsch, and others. An _Etymologicon Universale_ was published in 1811, at Cambridge in England, by W. Whiter.--Galiffec, in his _Italy and its Inhabitants_, 1816 and 1817, started the opinion, that the _Russian_ was the original language, and that the Old Slavonic and all the rest were only dialects.]

[Footnote 14: Or rather some writers in Lusatia and the Austrian provinces comprised in the kingdom of Illyria.]

[Footnote 15: The t' signifies the _Yehr_, or _soft sign_ of the Russians in addition to the _t_. This letter not existing in the English language, we have endeavoured to supply it in the best possible way by the aspirate of the Greek language, which when it follows [Greek: t], is not very unlike it; e.g. [Greek: _nukht emeron_], written [Greek: _nuchthhemeron_]. The real sound, however, is more like the German soft _ch_ after _t_, as in _Stadtchen, Hutchen_.]

[Footnote 16: They are to be compared with the Latin verbs frequentative, as _fact.i.tare_ instead of _facere, cursitare_ instead of _currere_, etc.]

[Footnote 17: With the exception of the Slovakish dialect.]

[Footnote 18: p.r.o.nounce the _i_ as in the word _machine_.]

[Footnote 19: To make, in writing, the different shades in the p.r.o.nunciation of the same letters in Polish, is absolutely impossible.

They must be caught with the ear; and, even then, cannot be imitated by the tongue of a foreigner.]

[Footnote 20: The English _a_ in _father_.]

[Footnote 21: Like the English _e_ in _they_.]

[Footnote 22: Compare the smooth breathing of the Greeks, and the Shemitish _Aleph_ or _Elif_.]

[Footnote 23: There is e.g. a single letter in Old Slavonic and Russian for _s.h.i.+sh_. The Pole writes _szez_.]

[Footnote 24: Schaffarik in his _Geschichte_, p. 40 sq.]

[Footnote 25: We abstain here from giving any historical references, as it would swell the volume beyond all due proportion; and historical notices, with the exception of those circ.u.mstances in immediate connection with the _language_, cannot properly be expected. All philological sources have been faithfully mentioned.]

PART 1.

HISTORY OF THE OLD OR CHURCH SLAVIC (COMMONLY CALLED SLAVONIC) LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

It can hardly be doubted that in very ancient times the whole Slavic race spoke only one language. This seems however very early to have been broken up into several dialects; and such indeed must have been the natural result of the wide extension of the people. Eginhard, the secretary and historian of Charlemagne, (ob. 839.) calls the Slavic nations, whom his hero subjugated, Veletabae, Sorabae, Obotrites, and Bohemians; and mentions expressly that they did not all speak the same, but a very similar language. It would be difficult to decide what portion of the still existing Slavic tongue has kept itself the purest; the Old Slavic has its Graecisms, the Servian its Turcisms, the Polish and Bohemian their Germanisms, the Russian its Tartarisms, Germanisms, and Gallicisms. No language in the world will ever resist the influence of the languages of its neighbours; and even the lofty Chinese wall cannot protect the inhabitants of that vast empire from corruptions in their language. It was formerly the general view, that the ecclesiastical Slavonic was to be considered as the _mother_ of all the living Slavic dialects; and there are indeed even now a few philologians and historians who still adhere to that opinion. The deeper investigations of modern times, wherever an equal share of profound erudition and love of truth has happened to be united in the same persons, have sufficiently proved, that the church Slavonic is to be considered, not as the mother of all the other Slavic languages, but as standing to them only in the relation of an elder sister,--a _dialect_ like them, but earlier developed and cultivated. The original mother-tongue, from which they were all derived, must have perished many centuries ago. But _where_ the Old Slavic was once spoken, and which of the still living dialects has been developed _immediately_ out of it,--an honour to which all the nations of the eastern stem, and one of the western, aspire,--is a question which all the investigations and conclusions of able historians and philologians have not hitherto been able to answer in a satisfactory manner. The highest authorities in Slavic matters are divided on this point. The disputes relating to it have been conducted with a degree of zeal, little proportioned to its intrinsic importance; nay, recently, with a pa.s.sion bordering upon fierceness; and what is still more to be regretted, without that regard to truth and candour, which ought to be the foundation of all historical researches. The great political questions which in the East of Europe have already disturbed the peace of nations--the idea of Panslavism, the disputed preponderance of Austria or Russia, the jealousy of the Slavic races against the Germans and among each other--have been allowed to exert a decided influence even on this purely historical question.

The claims of the Russians in this matter have long since been given up as easily refuted; being indeed dest.i.tute of any historical foundation. The circ.u.mstance, however, that the language of the Slavic Bible was, in Russia, until the reign of Peter the Great, exclusively the language of books, confirmed the natives for a long time in the belief, that the old Russian and the church Slavic were one and the same language; and that the modern Russian was the immediate descendant of the latter; until modern criticism has better ill.u.s.trated the whole subject.[1]

The great similarity of the _Slovakish_ language with the Old Slavic, especially of the national dialect spoken by those Slovaks who live scattered through Hungary; and the correspondence of their grammatical forms and flexion, to a degree not found in any other Slavic language; seemed to decide for the Slovaks. An historical basis is likewise not wanting to this hypothesis; for the Slovaks belonged formerly to the great kingdom of Moravia; where, according to all the ancient historians, Cyril and Methodius lived and taught the longest.[2]

On the other side, the venerable Bohemian Abbot Dobrovsky, who has examined the opinions of his predecessors with more exactness and erudition, and investigated the nature of the different Slavic dialects more deeply than any philologist before him, decides for the _Servians_. According to him, the Old Slavic was, in the time of Cyril and Methodius, the Servian-Bulgarian-Macedonian dialect, the language of the Slavi in Thessalonica, the birthplace of these two Slavic apostles.[3]

His grounds seemed indeed incontestable, until Kopitar, a name of equally high authority and importance in Slavic matters, who formerly agreed with him,[4] proved in a later work,[5] by arguments of no less weight, that the true home of the language of the Slavic Bible was to be sought among the _Pannonic_ or _Carantano-Slavi_, the _Slovenzi_ or _Vindes_ of the present times.[6] The adoption of a number of _German_ (not _Greek_) words for Christian ideas, as _tzerkwa_ Kirch, _post_ fast, _chrest.i.ti_ christening, etc., can only be explained, he a.s.serts, by German neighbourhood and German influence. These Pannonian Slavi were Methodius' own diocesans; for their instruction the Scriptures were first translated, and only carried by the two brethren, at a later period, to the Bulgarians and Moravians, who easily understood the kindred dialect.

Kopitar's arguments have hitherto failed to convince other eminent Slavic scholars, especially those of the Bohemian school; who still accept it as a fact, that the language of the Slavic Bible was, in the ninth century, the Servian-Bulgarian dialect; and Bulgaria its home.

Schaffarik, another great name in Slavic philological researches, seemed in an earlier work to adopt the opinion of Kopitar; but, after continuing his investigations further, he too came to the result, that Bulgaria was the home of the Old Slavic; and that the language still spoken in that province, corrupted indeed by foreign influences more than any other Slavic dialect, is its direct descendant.[7]

Be this as it may, the Old Slavic has long since become the common property of all the Slavic nations, and its treasures are for all of them an inexhaustible mine. Dobrovsky counted in it 1605 radical syllables.[8] Hence, it is not only rich in its present state, but has in itself the inestimable power of augmenting its richness, the faculty of creating new forms of expression for new ideas. But its great perfection does not consist alone in this multiplicity of words.

Schlozer, the great historian and linguist, justly observes: "Among all modern languages the Slavonic (Old Slavic) is one of those which are most fully developed. With its richness and other perfections I have here no concern. How it became so, the history of its cultivation sufficiently explains. Its model was the Greek language, in those days the most cultivated in the world; although Cedrenus no longer wrote like Xenophon. No idiom was more capable than the Slavonic of adopting the beauties of the Greek. The translators, intending a literal version, and not like Caedmon the Anglo-Saxon, or Otfried the German, a mere _poetic metaphrase_, were in a certain measure compelled to _subdue_ their own language, to make it flexible, to invent new turns, in order faithfully to imitate the original." [9]

After having ceased for centuries to be a language of common life, the Old Slavic has of course lost that kind of pliancy and facility, which only a living language, employed to express all the daily wants of men, can possibly acquire. But for this same reason it has gained infinitely in solemnity and dignity. Imposing by its very sound, exciting in the minds of millions sanctifying religious a.s.sociations, it seems to have grown almost unfit for any vulgar use, and to have become exclusively devoted to holy, or at least to serious and dignified subjects.

There are, as we have mentioned above, many circ.u.mstances, which seem to justify the opinion, that the Slavi were very early in possession of a degree of cultivation, which would make it indeed difficult to believe, that they should not have known how to read and write before the ninth century. Ditmar of Merseburg, the German, speaks of the inscriptions with which the pagan Obotrites, the Slavic inhabitants of Mecklenburg, used to cover their idols. The southern Slavi had much greater advantages. Neighbours of the Greeks, and in constant intercourse with them; both as a nation, by war and traffic, and through individuals who lived at the court of Constantinople; it can hardly be supposed, that no earlier attempt should have been made to adapt the Greek alphabet to the Slavic language, or to invent a new one founded on that basis. There was however not a single _satisfactory_ proof, that this was ever done with any degree of success before that time; notwithstanding all the grounds by which some modern writers, zealous and eloquent advocates of this opinion, endeavoured to support it.[10] It is only since Kopitar's discovery of some Glagolitic ma.n.u.scripts _at least_ cotemporary with the most ancient Cyrillic doc.u.ments known, that this question has taken another aspect. But whether there existed already a Slavic alphabet or not, it is very doubtful whether Cyril knew it; since the Slavic tribes among whom he and Methodius lived, were not acquainted with it; for all the legends and early historical annals agree in calling Cyril the inventor of the Slavic alphabet.

This alphabet, as arranged by Cyril, is founded on the Greek. In adjusting it, Cyril employed all the Greek characters; although a few of them have so much altered their shape in the course of time, as hardly to be recognized in their present form, e.g. the _Z_ and the _H_ of the Greeks. The first has the English, not the Greek p.r.o.nunciation of that letter; the latter in its altered shape is the common _I_ of the Slavic language, and thus corresponds with the p.r.o.nunciation of the modern Greeks. The _H_ or _Eta_ in an unaltered form, on the other hand, is the _N_ of the Slavic alphabet. The Greek _B_, , went over into the still softer sound of _V_, _v_;[11] and another sign was selected for Buki or _B_. This and all the characters to denote Slavic sounds, which he did not find in the Greek alphabet, Cyril took from other oriental languages, wherever he could find similar sounds; and thus very judiciously avoided that acc.u.mulation of letters to mark a single sound, which occur so often in all the systems of writing derived from the Latin. In this manner he extended his alphabet to forty-six characters or signs; some of them indeed merely signs for expressing shades of p.r.o.nunciation, which in other languages are denoted by marks and points. Some others are not p.r.o.nounced at all, and seem, at least according to the present state of the Slavic languages, utterly superfluous. Hence the Russians and Servians have diminished the number of their letters considerably; although the Russian has still some which could be amalgamated with others, or entirely omitted. Whether the Old Slavic actually had, at the time of Cyril's invention, so many different shades of sound, it would be difficult to decide at present, after that language has existed for so many centuries as a mere language of books.

Cyril, or, according to his baptismal name, Constantine, and Methodius his brother, must be reckoned among the benefactors of mankind; for it was they who procured for the Slavic nations, so early as the ninth century, the inestimable privilege of reading the Holy Scriptures in a language familiar to their ears and minds; whilst the sacred volume yet remained, for centuries after, inaccessible to all the other European Christians, the exclusive property of the priesthood. They were born in Thessalonica, in the early part of the ninth century, of a n.o.ble family; it does not appear whether of Greek or of Slavic extraction. Macedonia, of which province Thessalonica was in the times of the Romans the capital, was inhabited by many Slavi at a very early period. Constantine, who obtained by his learning and abilities the surname of the Philosopher, could have learned Slavic here, even without belonging to the Slavic nation. As a flouris.h.i.+ng commercial city, this place was peculiarly favourable for learning languages; and it was probably here too, that Constantine learned Armenian; for the introduction of several Armenian letters into the Slavic alphabet seems to prove, that this language was not unknown to him. When grown up, his parents sent him to Byzantium, where he entered the clerical profession.

It is reported that there came amba.s.sadors from the Khazares, a Hunnic-Tartaric tribe, to the emperor Michael, to ask for a teacher in Christianity. On the recommendation of Ignatius, Constantine was chosen for this mission, as being particularly qualified by his eloquence and piety. On the road he stopped for some time in Cherson on the Dnieper, where he learned the Khazaric language. The empire of the Khazares extended from the Volga and the Caspian Sea, across the Caucasian isthmus and the peninsula of Taurida, as far as to Moldavia and Walachia. Several Slavic tribes were tributary to them; but about the middle of the ninth century, at the time of Cyril's mission, their power began to decline; their va.s.sals became their enemies, and gradually their conquerors; until towards the end of the tenth and at the beginning of the eleventh century, their empire became entirely extinct.[12] Constantine converted and baptized their Khan, whose example was followed by a great part of the nation. It was probably after he had returned from this mission, that Cyril went to convert the Bulgarians. At this time, or just before, according to Dobrovsky's opinion, he invented the Slavic letters, and translated the Gospels, during his stay in Byzantium. This however is nothing more than an hypothesis, against which other hypotheses have been started by other scholars. Between A.D. 861 and 863, there came another emba.s.sy to the emperor from the Moravian prince Rostislav, who asked for a teacher, not only to instruct his subjects in Christianity more perfectly than it had been done before, but also to teach them _to read_. Most of the Moravians were already baptized. Constantine, accompanied by his brother Methodius, was sent to Moravia, where the people received them with expressions of joy. They introduced here the Slavic liturgy, and preached in the Slavic language.

One peculiar circ.u.mstance served to give to their persons a more than common sanct.i.ty. Constantine had been so fortunate as to discover in Cherson the bones of the holy Clement, relics which he every where carried with him. After three or four years, the pope invited the two brethren to Rome, where the possession of these relics procured them great honour and distinction. The pope Adrian, followed by the clergy and people, met them and their treasure before the gates of the city.

Both the brothers were consecrated as bishops; those of their Moravian disciples who had accompanied them to Rome, were made priests and deacons. Constantine received the consecration, but did not accept the diocese allotted to him. With the permission of the pope, he adopted the name of Cyril, and died forty days afterwards, Feb. 13, A.D. 868.

His remembrance is cherished as holy by the Slavic nations; and even as early as A.D. 1056, we find, in the calendar of the _Evangelium of Ostromir_, the fourteenth of February set down for the celebration of his memory.

Methodius returned to Moravia the same year, A.D. 868. He was what was called an _episcopus regionarius_, and had therefore no fixed residence. In the letters of pope John VIII, he is called bishop of Moravia and Pannonia. The first of these countries was at this period the theatre of b.l.o.o.d.y wars; the Slavic inhabitants of the other had been already converted to Christianity by German priests, as early as A.D. 798. In consequence of this, Methodius found the Latin wors.h.i.+p established here, and the Latin language in use. The innovation made by him, however, was of course greatly favoured by the people; who for the first time heard the gospel read to them in a language they understood. But he met with the more opposition from the priests. The whole jealousy of the Romish church seems to have been awakened by Methodius' proceedings. He found however a protector in the pope himself; who feared perhaps an entire alienation of the Slavic population, and their transition to the Oriental church; but was at the same time desirous to preserve the whole authority of the Latin language. In a letter to the Moravian prince Svatopluk, he enjoins expressly, "that in all the Moravian churches the gospel, for the sake of the greater dignity, should be read first in Latin, and afterwards translated into Slavic for the people ignorant of the Latin."

The question, what part of the Scriptures was translated by Cyril himself, what by his brother, and what supplements were made by their immediate successors, can now hardly be answered in a satisfactory manner. The honour of the invention of the alphabet appears to belong exclusively to Cyril; but in the sacred work of translation, Methodius was not less active; and his merits in respect to the conversion and instruction of the Slavi, were more favoured by a longer life.

According to John, exarch of Bulgaria, Cyril translated only _selections_ from the Gospels and the _Apostle_, as the book of Acts and the apostolic epistles are together called in Slavic; i.e. a _Lectionarium_, or extracts from those parts of the Scriptures, arranged in such a way as to serve as a lesson for every sacred day through the whole year. The Russians call such a collection _Aprakoss_, the Greeks [Greek: evangelia, eklogadia]. A work of this description is the above mentioned Evangelium of Ostromir, of the year 1056, written out expressly for the domestic use of Ostromir.

_posadnik_[13] of Novogorod, a near relation of the grand-duke of Izjaslav. It is however held to be more probable, that Cyril translated at first the whole of the Gospels, as still contained in a Codes of A.D. 1144, in the library of the Synod of Moscow. The Presbyter of Dioclea, who wrote about A.D. 1161, ascribes to Cyril not only the translation of the Gospels, but also of the Psalter;[14] and at a later period that of the whole Old and New Testaments, as well as of the _Ma.s.sa_, i.e. the Greek liturgy of Basilius and Chrysostom.

This opinion has since been generally received. In respect to the Old Testament, however, it is much to be doubted; since no ancient Codex of it exists, or has ever been proved to have existed. As to the New Testament, the Apocalypse must at any rate be excepted.

What part of the translation was performed by Methodius does not appear. John, exarch of Bulgaria, who lived in the same century, translated the books of Johannes Damascenus into Slavic. In the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Russian and Servian princes called into their empires many learned Greeks, versed in the Slavic language, that they might continue the holy work of translation.

From the historian Nestor it appears, that the Proverbs of Solomon existed in the twelfth century in Slavic. The book of Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, and Job, were translated in Servia in the thirteenth or fourteenth century; the Pentateuch in Russia or Poland A.D. 1400, or about that time. It is certain, that towards the close of the fifteenth century, the whole Bible was already translated into Old Slavic. According to Dobrovsky, the different parts of it were not collected until after A.D. 1488, when the Bohemian Bible of Prague was printed. This latter served as a model for the arrangement of the Slavonic Bible; what was wanting was at that time supplied, and those books of the Old Testament which had been translated from the Greek, were reviewed and corrected according to the Vulgate. The Codex of Moscow of A.D. 1499, the most ancient _existing_ copy of the whole Bible in the Old Slavic, is probably at the same time the first which was ever wholly completed.

The domains of the Old Slavic language, which seemed at first to be of very great extent, were soon, by the well known jealousy of the Romish church, limited to Russia and Servia. In Bohemia, which owed its conversion to German priests, the Slavic liturgy seems never to have been generally introduced; and the old Slavic church language has therefore exerted only an inconsiderable influence on the Bohemian. In Poland too, the Slavic liturgy was only _tolerated_, although the first books with Cyrillic types were printed there. In Moravia, Pannonia, and Illyria, the Slavonic wors.h.i.+p was, after some struggle, supplanted by the Latin; in the two latter countries, however, the language was retained, and the occidental church service conducted in the Slavic language; i.e. in a language which at that time was perfectly intelligible to the Illyrians.

It appears that the priests of this part of the country had never adopted the alphabet, which Cyril invented for the benefit of their brethren in Pannonia or Bulgaria;[15] who, less advanced in civilization than the tribes bordering on Italy, could as yet neither write nor read; while the latter were already in possession of an alphabet of an ancient and mysterious origin. For the first appearance of the Glagolitic letters, (_glagol_ signifies in Slavic _word_, or rather _verb_,) is still buried in perfect darkness. An almost fabulous antiquity has been ascribed to this alphabet by various old writers. According to some it was derived from the Goths or Getae; according to others, from the Phrygians and Thracians; and a very common tradition made St. Jerome, who was a native of Dalmatia, the inventor of it. The sounder criticism of our age seems at last to have proved that all these opinions were untenable. The oldest Glagolitic ma.n.u.script known before 1830 was a Psalter of A.D. 1220; i.e. more than three and a half centuries younger than the Cyrillic alphabet, and evidently copied from a known ma.n.u.script written in this latter.

This, in connection with some other circ.u.mstances, induced the learned Dobrovsky to declare the whole alphabet to be the result of a pious fraud. It seems surprising that this view should have been generally adopted,--at least for a certain time. It was explained by Dobrovsky in the following way.

At a Synod held at Spalatro in Dalmatia, in A.D. 1060, Methodius, notwithstanding he had been patronized by several popes, was declared a heretic, nearly two hundred years after his death; and it was resolved that henceforth no ma.s.s should be read except in the Latin or Greek language. From the decrees of that Synod, it appears that they took the Gothic and Slavonic for the same idiom. A great part of the inhabitants of Illyria remained nevertheless faithful to their language, and to a wors.h.i.+p familiar to their minds through that language. A singular means, Dobrovsky a.s.serts, was found by some of the shrewder priests, to reconcile their inclinations with the jealous despotism of Rome. A new alphabet was invented, or rather the Cyrillic letters were altered and transformed in such a way, as to approach in a certain measure to the Coptic characters. To give some authority to the new invention, it was ascribed to St. Jerome. This, it was maintained, is the Glagolitic alphabet, so called, used by the Slavic priests of Dalmatia and Croatia until the present time. Cyril's translation of the Bible and the liturgic books were copied in these characters, with a very few deviations in the language; which probably had their foundation in the difference of the Dalmatian dialect, or were the result of the progress of time; for this event took place at least 360 years after the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet. With this modification, the priests succeeded in satisfying both the people and the chair of Rome. It _sounded_ the same to the people, and _looked_ different to the pope. The people submitted easily to the ceremonies of the Romish wors.h.i.+p, if only their beloved language was preserved; and the pope, fearing justly the transition of the whole Slavic population of those provinces to the Greek church, permitted the ma.s.s to be read in Slavonic, in order to preserve his influence in general.

This hypothesis had come to be pretty generally received; when in the year 1830, some Glagolitic ma.n.u.scripts, which bore very decided evidence of being at least as old as the middle of the eleventh century, were discovered by Kopitar in the library of Count Clotz in Tyrol. The existence of the calumniated alphabet at a period cotemporary with the oldest Cyrillic ma.n.u.script known (the Evangelium of Ostromir), was a death-blow to the above singular narrative.

Kopitar published the newly discovered Codex, accompanied by a thundering philippic against the defenders of the former theory, and in favour of the antiquity of the Glagolitic alphabet, and of the Pannonian origin of the Slavic liturgy.[16] But here the matter rested. Nothing has since been discovered, (so far as we are informed,) to throw light on the first invention or introduction of this alphabet; no connecting link to explain its relation to the Cyrillic forms of writing.

According to Vostokof, a Russian scholar of great learning, and one of the princ.i.p.al names in Old Slavic literature,[17] the history of the Old Slavic or Church language and its literary cultivation, may be divided into three periods: