Ann, queen of England, sister to king Wenceslaus of Bohemia, possessed a Bible in Latin, German and Bohemian; to which circumstance Wickliffe alluded in one of his writings, quoted by Huss in his reply to Stockes, Tom. I. p.108. See Dobrovsky's Gesch. der böhm. Sprache, p.142.
The Bohemians, like the Germans, adopted the Latin alphabet; but the former, receiving it from the Germans, adopted it in the corrupted form of these latter, viz. they imitated the Gothic letters, so called, in which also all ancient Bohemian books are printed. In modern times the genuine Roman letters have nearly supplanted them; to which several different signs are added to adapt them to the Slavic sounds. The Bohemian alphabet can only be said to have forty-two letters, in so far as the same letter with or without a sign can be considered as two different letters. The English alphabet would be almost without number, if all the three or four modes of pronunciation connected with one and the same letter in that language, were indicated by certain signs, and these signs made three or four letters out of one.
The Bohemian writings of Huss are extant partly in manuscript, partly in single printed pamphlets, but have never been collected. They consist of sermons, hymns, letters to his friends, postillae, and other interpretations of the Scriptures, etc. His complete Latin works were first printed in Wittenberg 1558, and repeatedly afterwards. They contain many pieces which were originally written in Bohemian; as were also the letters which Luther caused to be printed with a preface of his own, Wittenberg 1536. Luther translated several of his hymns. The letters written by Huss from the prison at Constance are the expressions of a pure and elevated mind, and present the best evidence of his spotless Christian character. Some of them might serve as beautiful specimens of the sublime.