This person, who, to judge from our personal acquaintance
with him, probably on this occasion read the Gospels for the first
time in his life with any attention, took the rejected version for his
basis; altered it, according to his views of the dignity of the
Servian language, into the customary mixed Slavo-Servian Russian
idiom; and received the reward from the Society. Whether this is the
version afterwards printed at Leipsic and distributed in Servia by the
English Bible Society, we are not informed. From private letters we
know, that in the year 1827, that Society proposed to Vuk
Stephanovitch to allow him L500, if after obtaining appropriate
testimonies for the correctness of his version, he would print one
thousand copies in Servia; and also authorized its correspondent in
Constantinople, Mr. Leeves, to arrange the matter finally with Vuk.
From M. Kopitar's remark however, that the translation for the
Dalmatian Roman Catholics needed only to be transcribed with Cyrillic
letters to come into use among the eastern Servians, we are entitled
to conclude that the version now circulated, is not such as it ought
to be; and a correct one, for that part of the nation, is still a
desideratum. It would seem therefore that Vuk Stephanovitch cannot
have accepted the offer in question.
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