These all use the same language and alphabet; but
the four latter have no distinct literature, except some collections
of popular poetry.
The literature of the eastern Servians, the result of their
intellectual life as a nation, does not yet date back a hundred years;
nay, if regarded from another point of view, it is not yet forty years
old. Up to that time, all the Servians belonging to the Greek Church,
notwithstanding the honourable example of Russia to the contrary, had
written in the Old or Church Slavonic; or, in more modern times, in a
language mixed up from this latter and several other dialects.
Schaffarik remarks, that out of about 400 Servian books printed
between the years 1742, or more properly 1761, and 1826, about one
eighth part are written in Old Slavic; another eighth in the common
dialect of the people; while all the rest vary between these two in
innumerable shades and degrees.[4] This eighth part written in
ordinary Servian, and essentially the same language which the
Dalmatians and the greater part of the Croats speak, are all of very
recent date. Indeed, with the exception of a single writer,
Obradovitch, who found no immediate followers, the dialect of the
people was in general despised by the clergy and those who laid claim
to education, as being wholly unfit for books, and (as Vuk
Stephanovitch strongly expresses himself) only proper for "cowherds
and swineherds.
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