Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/148

 134 HUNGARIAN LITERAT URE poetic language. Literaturc could not attain its zen itb until it had an adequate organ at its disposal. Like Klopstock in Germany, so Vörösmarty in Hungary, was the first to employ the kind of language which afterwards became the language of all poets. If we read a poet who lived before Vörösmarty, and one who lived after bim, we are struck by the difference between them. Vörösmarty employed a vast number of turns and words and poetical forms wh ich were unknown before his time, but wh ich appealed to the popular imagination and became a national treasure. His second achievement was to unite the hitherto con­ trasted qualities of the different literary sch ools in his creations and so to form a higher and more perfect type. Before Vörösmarty's time there was one school of a well-marked national tendency. The subjects were chosen from the national life to serve;: a national aim, every aliusion contributing to that end. We may cite Joseph Gvadányi, the auth or of A Cormtry Nofary's Jo urney to Buda, or Andreas Dugonics, who wrote historical novels in a somewhat uncouth style, and with too much of the didactic eleme nt in them. The works of that school were defective inasmuch a s they were not sufficiently artistic. Then there was the classical school, the adherents of which imitated the Latin authors, especially Horace. Here no doubt there was enough of the artistic element­ too much perhaps--for autbors were too carefui of the form, with the resu lt that their productions were often stiff and Iifeless and left their readers cold. But Vörösmarty combined the best qualities of both schools in his works, without their faults. He had the perfection of form and the lucidity of composition for which the Latin poets were famous, but he also possessed in full