Venelin, a young Russian scholar, who by his researches on
the Bulgarian, or, as he would fain call it, the _Bolgarian_ language,
had excited great hopes in the learned Slavic world, was sent in 1835
to Bulgaria, by the Russian Archaeographical Commission, to search,
after historical documents and to examine the language. The
publication of a "Bolgarian Grammar," and two volumes of a "History of
the Bolgarians," were the result. While engaged in preparing a third
volume, he died; less regretted by the literary world, it is said,
than would have been anticipated some years before; since his
productions had not justified the expectations raised by his zeal. He
seems to have been one of those visionary etymologists, who found
their conclusions on the analogy of sound and similar accidental
features; a class of scholars, which, in our age of philosophical
research, has no longer much chance of success.
The history of the Bulgarians is a series of continued warfare with
the Servians, Greeks, and Hungarians, on the one hand; and on the
other, with the Turks, who subdued them, and put an end to the
existence of a Bulgarian kingdom in A.D. 1392. The people, first
converted to Christianity by Cyril and Methodius, had hitherto adhered
to the Greek church; except for a short interval in the last half of
the twelfth century, when the Roman chair succeeded in bringing them
under its dominion.
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