Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/186

172 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE theoretical initiator of reforms. It was he who first gave an impetus to prison reform in Hungary, where, as in other countries, the prisons were dens of cruelty, in which the criminals became still more degraded. He also demonstrated most convincingly the advisability of Jewish emancipation. For years he pressed upon the people the need for a responsible Government, and for the introduc­tion of a parliamentary system like that of England, and he vigorously exposed the obsoleteness of the autonomous provincial system. He was the most fervent advocate of compulsory education. ln Deák's great task of reconciling Austria and Hungary, Eőtvős was his chief fellow-worker.

Wherever profound thought and sound judgment were needed the people looked to Eőtvős, although the actual carrying out of his plans usually fell into the bands of other men.

His first novel was The Carthusian (1838), a work full of sentimental and melancholy reflections.

While Eőtvős was travelling once in France he visited the Grande Chartreuse, the cloister of terrible silence, and met there a pale-faced young Carthusian to whom a beautiful and passionate woman had written letter after letter urging him not to take the vows. This incident provided Eőtvős with his subject. The Carthusian is a novel of the type of Chateaubriand's René, or Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, that is to say, of the kind of novel in which we see the mal de siècle at work. But the novel of Eőtvős has a strong moral foundation lacking in similar works. "It is only the selfish for whom life contains no consolation." That is the fundamental idea of the book, and the hero Gustave wins a gradual victory over egotism.

The story is written as though it were the diary of a monk of the Grande Chartreuse. The hero is a rich