SCHAFARIK (in Bohemian Safařik), Paul Joseph (1795-1861), was by origin a Slovak, and was born in 1795 at Kobeljarova, a village of northern Hungary, where his father was a Protestant clergyman. It was not till his sixteenth year that any enthusiasm was aroused in him for the language and literature of his race. At this time an essay of Jungmann’s fell into his hands, and at once gave a direction to his studies. His first production was a volume of poems in Bohemian entitled The Muse of Tatra with a Slavonic Lyre, published at Levocza in 1814. After this we find him collecting Slovak songs. In 1815 he began a course of study at the university of Jena, and while there translated into Czech the Clouds of Aristophanes and the Maria Stuart of Schiller. In 1817 he came to Prague and joined the literary circle of which Dobrovsky, Jungmann, and Hanka were members. In 1819 he was appointed headmaster of the high school at Neusatz (Novi Sad) in the south of Hungary; he remained occupied with the duties of this office till 1833. But besides his educational functions he busied himself with the study of Servian literature and antiquities, and acquired many rare books and manuscripts. In 1826 his Geschichte der Slawischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten appeared at Pesth. This may truly be called an epoch-making book in the history of Slavonic studies. It was the first attempt to give anything like a systematic account of the Slavonic languages, the knowledge of which was at that time in such a rudimentary state that even Schafarik is not able to classify properly the Bulgarian language, but has grouped it with Servian. In 1833 appeared his Serbische Lesekörner oder historisch-kritische Beleuchtung der Serbischen Mundart, and in 1837 bis great work Slovanské ...Starozitnosti (“Slavonic Antiquities ”), by which he is at the present time best known. The “Antiquities” have been translated into Polish, Russian, and German, and we are promised an English version shortly from the pen of Mrs Alexander Kerr. This valuable work was enlarged and improved in the second edition, which appeared among the collected works of Schafarik, edited by Jirecek after the author’s death. In 1840 he published in conjunction with Palacký Die ältesten Denkmäler der Böhmischen Sprache, in which he defended the authenticity of those Bohemian documents which have been declared spurious by some scholars. In the year 1837 poverty compelled him to accept the uncongenial office of censor of Czech publications, which he abandoned in 1847 on becoming custodian of the
Prague public library. In 1842 he published his valuable work Slovanský Národopis, which gives a complete account of Slavonic ethnology. In 1848 he was made professor of Slavonic philology in the university of Prague, but resigned it in the following year, probably from causes in some way connected with the political troubles of that period, of which Prague was one of the centres. He was then made keeper of the university library, in which office he continued till his death in 1861. He had long been in broken health,—his pains of body being augmented by brain disease, which had been brought on by his severe literary labours and also by family anxieties. His latter days were devoted to philology, one of the chief subjects treated of by him being the antiquity of the Glagolitic alphabet, about which he held very different opinions at various periods of his life. He was also for some time conductor of the “Journal” of the Bohemian Museum, and edited the first volume of the Vybor, or selections from old Czech writers, which appeared under the auspices of the literary society in 1845. To this he prefixed a grammar of the Old Bohemian language. His correspondence with Pogodin has been published by Prof. Nil Popoff of Moscow among the letters of that eminent scholar.
Schafarik was a man of the purely literary type,—an indefatigable worker, an enthusiast, and a sincere patriot. The study of Slavonic philology and ethnology has advanced since his time, but the greater part of his work is permanent and monumental. Besides his collected writings (Sebrané Spisy), which were reprinted at Prague after his death during the years 1862-1865, a posthumous work by him also made its appearance, edited by J. Jireček, Geschickte der Südslawischen Literatur.
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