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Rh characterised Hungarians, whence the great effect of the movement upon the people. Only once has the soul of the nation been stirred more profoundly, and that was during the first half of the nineteenth century, when the new democratic ideas took hold of the popular mind. The catastrophe of Mohács had an equally great effect on people's minds. It strengthened the feeling of patriotism just as the Reformation increased religious fervour. The Hungarians became zealous both for their fatherland and for religious liberty. Great national misfortunes always light the flame of patriotism, which in times of security often becomes extinguished. Hungarian poetry of this period echoes the patriot's grief; the note is now soft, now harsh, but always the expression of real affliction; and in some of the poems we find the sadness of the patriot blended with fervent religious feeling. Melancholy became a dominant note of the lyric up to comparatively recent times.

Fervent love for the fatherland, and bitter grief at its distresses, are revealed in the poetry of the chief Hungarian lyric poet of the sixteenth century, Valentine Balassa. The same feelings inspired the greatest epic poet of the seventeenth century, Count Nicholas Zrinyi; and the same note is heard from the lyres of the eighteenth century poets, especially those of the classical school. Even in the nineteenth century we still see men turning in thought towards Mohács—Charles Kisfaludy, for instance, "greeting with sighs the tomb of our greatness"; Berzsenyi, however, speaks of the event with frigid stoicism, while Kölcsey's tone is one of profound melancholy, and Vörösmarty's peerless hexameters possess a gloomy grandeur.

But suddenly, during Vörösmarty's lifetime, came the