613 



DOBRIZHOFFER, MARTIN. 



DOBROWSKY, JOSKPH. 



611 



remainder of his life, in the occupation of several highly-respectable 

 official posts of a legal character, and in such constant literary activity 

 that he became the acquaintance or friend of a' most every person of 

 any note connected with Hungarian literature. Indeed almost all the 

 information that has been put in circulation on that subject in England 

 bad its origin in Dobreotei. He was the friend and correspondent of 

 Dr. now Sir John Bowring, to whom he supplied much of the informa- 

 tion for hia ' Poetry of the Magyars ;' he also communicated to Mies 

 Pardoe materials for her account of Hungarian literature and authors 

 in her * City of the Magyar,' and he wrote the article on the subject in 

 the Leipeic ' Conversations-Lexikon,' which, by its being trauslated in 

 Lieber'a ' Encyclopaedia Americana,' and the translation reprinted in 

 the Glasgow ' Popular Encyclopaedia,' has become familiar to thousands 

 of English readers. As a poetical writer, Dbbrentei was not successful ; 

 his original poems appear to have been pleasing, and no more ; and 

 though his translation of Shakspere's ' Macbeth ' was acted at Presburg 

 in 1825, it did not receive such a welcome as to encourage the publi- 

 cation of his versions of the other masterpieces of Shakspere, which 

 were reserved in Hungarian for the more successful pen of a lady, 

 Emilia Lemoiitou, who is, we believe, the only translatress of our great 

 poet in any language. Dobrentei was more at home in his exertions 

 to establish a ' Casino ' at Pesth, an establishment of nearly the same 

 kind aa an English club of our own days, but borrowed both in plan 

 and name from Italy, where it is made use of not to render more 

 exclusive the society of the capital, but to enliven the dullness of the 

 provincial towns. He was, after Count Stephen Szechenyi, the most 

 influential person in promoting this institution, and was for some years 

 its secretary, but relinquished the post to take that of one of the 

 secretaries of the Hungarian Academy in 1831, of which he was also 

 a zealous promoter. Kohl, the traveller, bears testimony to the 

 extraordinary influence of these establishments on the whole tone of 

 society even in Hungarian villages, where they were imitated on a 

 small scale. In 1837 Dobrentei received an intimation from the 

 government that his holding the post of secretary to the Academy any 

 longer would be incompatible with his official duties, and he then 

 devoted himaelf to the editorship of his great work, the ' K<5gi Magyar 

 Nyelveuilckek,' or ' Ancient Monument* of the Magyar Language,' the 

 first volume of which, a substantial quarto, was published at Buda in 

 1825, and the fifth was in preparation at the time of Dbbreutei's death. 

 Hii labours on this work were the delight of his life, he pursued 

 them with irrepressible ardour, and on the result his reputation rests 

 securely. When lie began hardly anything was known of the history 

 of the Magyar language for centuries, and a subject that be found in 

 ilarkners he left environed with light. He wai indefatigable in dis- 

 covering the existence of old correspondence or documents in family 

 archives; when be bad once discovered them, he was no less eager in 

 obtaining permission to copy and make use of them, and he was not a 

 roan to take easily a refusal. By this combination of qualities he 

 amaued a quantity of materials which nobody before him had ever 

 ,i;d to <;xi.-t, and he made such good use of them that the works 

 of subsequent authors are full of constant references to Dbbreutei's 

 ' Nyel venjldktk,' which has become one of the principal monuments of 

 Hungarian literature. How the revolution of 1848 affected him we 

 have not seen stated, but it is well known that his friend and fellow- 

 promoter of progress, Count Stephen Szeche'nyi, became a maniac. 

 Dobrentei was still engaged in collecting materials for his great work 

 when surprised by death on the 27th of March 1851, at the age of 65. 

 H wai tin; author of numerous lives of Hungarian worthies both in 

 the periodicals to which he contributed and in the ' Esmeretch Ttira,' 

 or H ungarian translation of the Leipsic ' Conversations-Lexikon.' with 

 original additions to the Hungarian articles, and in editions of Berz- 

 senvi and other authors published under his superintendence, but no 

 extended account of himself appears to have been published since his 

 death. 



DOBRIZHOFFER, MARTIN, Jesuit missionary to the South 

 American Indians, was born at Gratz, in Styria, in 1717. He was 

 admitted into the Society of Jesus in 1736, and having undergone the 

 regular course of training and probation, was Bent in 1749 to the 

 society's mission in Paraguay. Dobrizhoffer dwelt among the Abipones 

 and Guariuis for eighteen years, when, on the expulsion of the Jesuit 

 missionaries from Spanish South America, in 1767, he was compelled 

 to return to Europe. He took up his residence at Vienna, where he 

 became muoh noticed, on account of his descriptions of the people 

 among whom he had laboured. The empress Maria-Theresa is said 

 to have been a frequent auditor to his animated narratives. At 

 length he was induced to write an account of the more remarkable 

 of the two races. In 1784 this account was published at Vienna, und-r 

 the title of ' Ilistoria de Abiponibua, equestri bellicosaque Paraguarise 

 Nations, locupMata copiosis barbarum gentium, urbium, hominutn, 

 ferenim, nmpbibiorum, insectorum, Berpentium pnecipuorum, piscium, 

 avium, arborum, plantarum, aliarumque cjnsdem provincial! proprie- 

 tntnin observationibus,' 8 Toll. 8vo. Dobrizhoffer's account of the 

 Abipones is very ample, and minute even to tediousness; and though 

 it contains many curious and interesting facts about a people long 

 since (1770) migrated from their own country [ABIPONES, in Euo. CYC., 

 QEOO. DIT.], it is impossible to read it without considerable scepti- 

 cism. Dobrizhoffur was in fact an old man when he wrote hia history, 

 and somo sixteen yearn bad pawed away since he was compelled to 



leave the couutry ; and, like Bruce, his imagination had come to play 

 falsely with his memory. Thus when, in illustration of the longevity 

 of this wonderful race, he says that an Abiponiau who dies at eighty 

 is thought to have couie to an untimely end, and that in ordinary 

 cases a man of a hundred has his sight and hearing unimpaired, and 

 can leap on his horse as nimbly as a boy, and without fatigue sit there 

 for hours, we are constrained to hesitate about accepting the state- 

 ment without some grains of allowance. Dobrizhoffer's book was a 

 favourite with Southey, and at his suggestion Sara Coleridge trans- 

 lated it into English: 'An Account of the Abipones, aa Equestrian 

 people of Paraguay,' 3 vols. 8vo, 1822. It has also been translated 

 into German. 



DOBKOWSKY, JOSEPH, known as the patriarch of modern 

 Bohemian literature, was the son of a Bohemian sergeaut in an 

 Austrian regiment of dragoons, and was born on the 17tli of August 

 1753 at Gyarrnat near Raab in Hungary, where the regiment was in 

 quarters. Hia father's name was Daubrawsky, but the regimental 

 chaplain, who was ignorant of Bohemian spelling, entered the child 

 in the baptismal register as Dobrowsky, and this was ever afterwards 

 recognised aa his name. The boy did not learn the Bohemian language 

 till he was ten years old, when he was sent to Deutschbrot for his 

 education, and in after-life it was long before he took any particular 

 interest in the subject. His taste for study made him adopt an eccle- 

 siastical life, and he entered the order of Jesuits in October 1772, only 

 ten mouths before its dissolution, after which he prosecuted hia 

 studies at the university of Prague, and acquired some reputation for 

 his knowledge of the oriental languages. He then became a tutor in 

 the family of the Count von Nostitz, one of the great families of 

 Bohemia, where he found as fellow-tutor Durich, the historian of 

 Slavonic literature, and Pelzel, a noted miscellaneous writer, who 

 was then engaged in compiling his 'Biographies of Bohemian and 

 Moravian Authors and Artists,' in Germau and Latin, the book which, 

 with balbinus's ' Bohemia Docta,' has been the source of most that is 

 in circulation on the Bohemian worthies. Pelzel requested Dobrowsky 

 to assist him in collecting particulars for some of his biograpliie-s and 

 Dobrowsky, who had a most tenacious memory, became by this meant 

 so versed in a short time in the miuutire of the subject, that he 

 warmed more and more into interest for it, and it finally became the 

 business of his life. It may be remarked that Dobrowsky subse- 

 quently wrote the lives of both Durich and Pelzel, but that, though 

 as a member of the Bohemian Society he was bound to furnish the 

 society with some account of his own, he always deferred doing so 

 for more than forty years, and finally the cartful biographer died 

 without leaving any particulars of his own biography. His first 

 separate publication was in 1778, when ho issued an edition of the 

 fragment of St Mark's Gospel preserved at Prague, and believed to 

 be in the handwriting of the apostle, but which he so forcibly demon- 

 strated to be spurious, that the papal nuncio of Vienna openly 

 expressed his opinion that he had settled the question. Such an out- 

 cry however was raised against him by the inferior clergy in Bohemia, 

 that he found it advisable to print a pamphlet which had been 

 written against bis views at his own expense, and to circulate his 

 answer to it only in manuscript. He next commenced a periodic",! 

 review of Bohemian and Moravian literature, but this was soon 

 stopped by the censorship for some incautious expressions iu one of 

 his prefaces complained of by gome ecclesiastical authority, and which 

 be refused to retract. It was evident to his friends that with his 

 ardent and somewhat refractory temperament he would make no way 

 in the church, and after the death of the emperor Joseph in 1790, 

 he quietly withdrew into a learned retirement, subsisting on a pension 

 which was paid him by the Austrian government as a compensation 

 for a suppressed post he had held in the time of Joseph, and on 

 another granted him by the Nostitz family. He made in 1792 an 

 expedition to Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, at the expense of the 

 Royal Bohemian Scientific Society, to inquire into the fate of the 

 books and manuscripts, which at the time of the capture of Prague 

 by the Swedes in the Thirty Years War, had been carried off from 

 the Bohemian libraries. He also made at different times excursions 

 through every part of Bohemia and Moravia, but with this exception 

 his life was chiefly passed in quiet at the country-seat of one of the 

 Nostitzes. For this there was unfortunately a strong reason. In 

 1795 he was for some time out of his senses; in 1801 he was obliged 

 to be confined in a lunatic asylum, and though he soon recovered 

 from this violent attack, yet ever after, on an average twice a year, he 

 became occasionally disordered in mind. His physicians considered 

 that this was owing to over-study, Dobrowsky stoutly maintained that 

 study never did harm to any man, but attributed his illness to a shot 

 which Lad entered his breast in 1782 at a hunting party, and remained 

 unextracted to his death. The longest interval of freedom from his 

 disorder which he enjoyed was once for eighteen months, when he 

 was writing the ' Inetitutiones 1 ingu:e Slavicic dialecti veteris,' on which 

 his mind was fully occupied. Meanwhile his fame was constantly 

 spreading, be was elected a member of all the distinguished academies 

 of the east of Kurope, and spoken of very highly by Gotue. For 

 about twenty years, from 1809 to 1829, he was generally recognised 

 as the highest authority on questions connected with the history of 

 the Bohemian language and literature, then every year coming inoru 

 and more into notice. This position was not always a pleasant one ; 



