Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/206

192 gift for singing. It was at Kis-Körös, in the first hour of the year 1823, that Alexander Petőfi first saw the light. His parents often changed their dwelling-place, and when the boy was ten years old, they sent him to a school in the cap ital. From his class-room the young Petőfi could look out on to the square in which his statue has since been erected. At the age of twelve, we find him in Aszód, where for three years he attended the grammar school.

It often seems as if the story of our life were all written down beforehand, in the depths of our soul, in our inclinations and talents, and as though life itself were but the unfolding and development in time and space of what lay hidden within us.

Petőfi had, in boyhood, three marked characteristics: a love of independence, a desire to became an actor, and a genius for poetry. For three months he was at the high school in Selmecz, but his father stopped his allowance on learning that his son, in spite of repeated warnings, associated with actors.

Deprived of that support, Petőfi left Selmecz and went to Budapest, travelling on foot. This was his first pedestrian adventure, and was full of hardships, but it was not his last, nor his most arduous. At Budapest, quite by chance he met his father, but he escaped and went to the National Theatre, where for some time he served in the double capacity of supernumerary and messenger, carrying the various actors' parts to their houses. Then suddenly a brighter day dawned for him. A relative, an engineer, gave him shelter at his house, and here the boy, quitting his hard service at the theatre, lived the life of a gentleman's son, riding, driving, boating, and hunting. Here also he commenced to write, imitating the Latin