But of all the writers of Servia, he from whom the volumes emanate whence these translations are taken, is beyond comparison the most attractive and the most popular.
_Stephanovich Karadjich Vuk_ was born on the 26th October, O. S., in the year 1787, at _Trshich_, an obscure village in Turkish Servia (Iadar), near the town of Losnitza and the river Drina, at a short distance from the Austrian and Hungarian frontier, where, however, the Servian language is spoken with far more purity than in the larger towns. In his early youth he passed the borders, and received his education at the Gymnasium of the dissidents from the Greek church at Karlovitz. There his school instruction began and ended; but having visited Vienna, intercourse there with intelligent and instructed men led to the development of the natural powers of his mind, and directed his inquiries to the hidden stores of popular literature which his country possessed. A feeble and crippled frame unfitted him for bodily labour, and all his thoughts and all his ardour attached themselves to intellectual exertions. He began his literary career at Vienna, and published in 1814 his Servian Grammar, and a century of Servian songs; but the embarrassments of the censorship induced him to seek a freer field for the publication of his works, and he removed to Leipzig, where the edition, in three volumes, of his popular Servian poetry, appeared in 1823–4. He soon obtained high reputation there, and received the diploma of doctor in philosophy, and was elected to many literary distinctions. The emperor Nicholas, in that spirit so honourable to many of the autocrats of Russia, has conferred on him a yearly pension of 100 ducats; and he now pursues his interesting inquiries, and from time to time exerts that creating and regenerating power which has called the poetry of Servia into existence, and established for it a permanent reputation. { 0j}
The Servians must be reckoned among those races who vibrated between the north and the east; possessing to-day, dispossessed to-morrow; now fixed, and now wandering: having their head-quarters in Sarmatia for many generations, in Macedonia for following ones, and settling in Servia at last. But to trace their history, as to trace their course, is impossible. At last the eye fixes them between the Sava and the Danube, and Belgrade grows up as the central point round which the power of Servia gathers itself together, and stretches itself along the right bank of the former river, southwards to the range of mountains which spread to the Adriatic and to the verge of Montengro. Looking yet closer, we observe the influence of the Venetians and the Hungarians on the character and the literature of the Servians. We track their connexion now as allies, and now as masters; once the receivers of tribute from, and anon as tributaries to, the Grecian empire; and in more modern times the slaves of the Turkish yoke. Every species of vicissitude marks the Servian annals,—annals represented only by those poetical productions of which these are specimens. The question of their veracity is a far more interesting one than that of their antiquity. Few of them narrate events previous to the invasion of Europe by the Turks in 1355, but some refer to facts coeval with the Mussulman empire in Adrianople. More numerous are the records of the struggle between the Moslem and the Christian parties at a later period; and last of all, they represent the quiet and friendly intercourse between the two religions, if not blended in social affections, at least associated in constant communion. { 0k}