Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/93

Rh basis and the brilliant oratory of the French plays. He imitates Voltaire even in such little peculiarities as putting speeches full of allusions to current events into the mouths of his characters. Attila, for instance, the ancient king of the Huns, speaks against the unlawful power of the priests.

Bessenyei's plays are weak, and he was not very fortunate in his choice of the drama as a means of regenerating Hungarian literature, at a time when there were neither theatres nor actors. Nevertheless he must be honoured as a pioneer, and since his time the history of Hungarian literature has been one of continuous pro­gress. The modern era was inaugurated by him, though perhaps he effected more by his example and enthusiasm than by his talent.

Several other plays of his were published in Vienna. One is Attila and Buda, the theme of which is the hostility between the King of the Huns and his brother Bléda, or Buda; the subject of another is Ladislas Hunyadi, the noble and chivalrous hero, beheaded in the flower of his youth. They are all more or less similar, written in a cold, somewhat stiff style. He was much more fortunate in a prose comedy, The Philosopher, which contains one successful figure, a good-natured, straightforward, but somewhat unpolished country gentleman, the type of a Hungarian landowner. This type, which afterwards figured so largely in Hungarian literature, was first intro­duced by Bessenyei, but later on greater writers made use of it, and enriched it with many original features.

Bessenyei imitated Voltaire in his prose writings even more than in his dramas. The eighteenth century liked novels containing the meditations of a traveller, where the hero was supposed to visit foreign countries and give