But
the wonderful tales they convey, have mostly been only confined to
tradition; especially there, where the fountain of poetry streamed;
and streams still, in the richest profusion, namely, in Servia. Handed
down from generation to generation, each has impressed its mark upon
them. Tradition, that wonderful offspring of reality and imagination,
affords no safer basis to the history of poetry, than to the history
of nations themselves. To dig out of dust and rubbish a few fragments
of manuscripts, which enable us to cast one glance into the night of
the past, has been reserved only for recent times. Future years will
furnish richer materials; and to the inquirer, who shall resume this
subject fifty years after us, it may be permitted to reduce them to
historical order; while we must be contented to appreciate those,
which are before our eyes, in a moral and poetical respect.
The Slavi, even when first mentioned in history, appear as a singing
race. Procopius, relating the surprise of a Slavic camp by the Greeks,
states that the former were not aware of the danger, having lulled
themselves to sleep by singing.[2] Karamzin, in his history of the
Russian empire, narrates, on the authority of Byzantine writers, that
the Greeks being at war with the Avars, about A.
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