Though it is not my intention to write a general history of the literature of Servia, in introducing one interesting branch of it to the English reader, I cannot but slightly refer to the essential services it has received from a few distinguished writers.
_John Raich_ was born in Karlovitz in 1726, and died in 1801. He received his elementary education from the Jesuits in Komorn, removed to the evangelical school at Oedenburg, and completed his studies at Kiev. He afterwards visited the famous convent of Chilendar (on Mount Athos), which was built and endowed by Shupan Nemana, who died there as a monk, having taken the name of Simeon. Raich was ultimately chosen archimandrite of the convent of Kovil, in Chaskisten bataillon. His principal work, printed at Vienna (1792–5), is his history of the Slavonian people. { 0i} He also wrote a history of Servia, Rasza, Bosnia, and Rama (Vienna, 1793); a tragedy on the death of the Tzar Urosh (Ofen, 1798); and many theological treatises. He uses the church Slavonian dialect, but his style is full of Servian and Russian phraseology, which he perhaps adopted as likely to recommend his productions.
_Dosithei Obradovich_, who was born in 1739, and died in 1811, was the first who ventured to apply the popular language to the purposes of literature. His birth-place was Chakovo in the _Banat_ of Temeshvar, and at the age of fourteen he became a monk in the Opovo convent. Here he was too restless to remain, and having determined to see foreign countries, he travelled for a quarter of a century, and visited Greece, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Russia, Germany, France, and England. The love of home had mastered the desire of change, and he returned to Servia, when he was made a senator at Belgrad, and appointed to superintend the education of the children of Tzerny George. He published at Leipzig, in 1783, an auto-biography, entitled “_Tzivot i prikliuchenjia D. Obranovicza_,” besides sundry poems and fables, and moral treatises.
_Demetrius Davidovich_ has greatly assisted in elevating the language of the Servian people to the best purposes of literary instruction. He is (I believe at this time) the secretary to Milosh, the hospodar of Servia. For many years he edited a Servian newspaper at Vienna, and has annually published a Servian almanack (_Zabavnik_), in which are many interesting particulars respecting the literary and political history of his country. The indisposition on the part of the superintendents of schools in Servia, to employ the popular tongue as the instrument of education, has been long the ban of civilization, and the barrier to national improvement. But of late the influence of those who have endeavoured to make literature subserve the interests and the happiness of the many rather than the few, has led to the dismissal of Slavonian, and the substitution of Servian books. A controversy, with much controversial bitterness, is at the present moment carried on in Servia (where, as elsewhere, to be dignified is by some thought better than to be useful, and to please a few pedants is deemed more worthy of ambition than to instruct a whole people), between the advocates of the antiquated Slavonic, and those whose simple and intelligible maxim is, “write as you speak, if you would be understood;” and of the latter every year adds greatly to the numbers.