Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/252

 234 HUNGARÍAN LITERATURE prompts him to help. When he sees a widow, weeping at her murdered husband's tomb, he promises to avenge her. When a wild bull tears along the street, Toldi steps forth calmly to meet him as though merely performing an ordinary duty. He pursues a knight who has carried off a lady to the innermost recesses of his castle. On meeting a his shoulder under the wheel and lifts it up. He is always ready to risk his life for his king, even after they have quarrelled. Altogether he is one of those who do everything with their whole soul. soldier belongs body and soul to his duty. Toldi the lover is penetrated to the centre of his being by the bitter- sweet feeling of his love. Every man possesses the qualities which belong to him as the member of a particular nation, as an individual and as a unit of humanity in general. In Toldi, not only the national and the individual interest us, we are attracted by the universal human element in him. We are not merely touched by his loyalty, and love and filial affection ; his career may be regarded as a symbol of human life in general. Paul Gyulai referring to Toldi, asked, "Which of us has not experienced in youth that same restless desire to achieve something, driving him from the family circle out into the wide world ? Who does not remember a mother who watched him with an riage which has fallen into a ditch, he puts Toldi the anxious heart, and felt an uplifting sense of triumph at his first success ? Who has not, on the threshold of manhood, been guilty of some indiscretion which has caused suffering to others, all unintended it may be, so that a hidden wound pains him even when he is other- wise happy ? And when we are old, and our hopes have become remembrances, and the burning flame of desire ®