Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/58

44 period of Count Stephen Széchenyi's reforms, and a vision of the "future Hungary" rose beside the spectre of the past, and, in the imagination of the poet, the two forms strove with one another.

It is this ever-present patriotic feeling which distinguishes Hungarian poetry from that of other nations. In no other poetry of the time is the note of love for the Fatherland so powerful and so fundamental. With other peoples the feeling of national unity was still lying dormant, while in Hungary it moved the heart of the nation with the unconscious but mighty force of an universal instinct. The fire of the Turkish wars only served to make this element in the Hungarian character as strong as iron; and the development, in the sixteenth century, of the feeling of nationality, was one of the most important phases of the evolution through which the nation's mind has passed.

Their religion and their country were the two ideals which inspired the poets of the sixteenth century to sing their songs of joy or sorrow, and it was for his religion and his country, both of which were constantly threatened by neighbours to north and south, that the Hungarian statesman trembled. The Hungarian still fought for "God and the Fatherland" as he did in the Middle Ages—only the foe had changed. And the two-fold cry echoed by the nation's poetry is "God and Fatherland."

The sixteenth century was controversial, and consequently an age of prose. There were, however, a few poets, both in the first, and in the latter half of the century, who deserve attention. One was a wandering minstrel, Sebastian Tinódi; and another, a passionate warrior, a troubadour-knight, Valentine Balassa.