Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/57

Rh the Diet, and lost his paternal possessions. This is the solitary fact preserved of his history.

The songs of, who lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century, are not without merit. His Példabeszédek (Proverbs) are excellent and condensed moral lessons. He was an Eques auratus, but complains in one of his poems of his defective education. Of his history little is known. His works have been several times reprinted, and are popular among the middle orders.

deserves little praise except on account of his rhymes, which are generally perfect. He wrote with great facility; but he could not relieve himself from the trammels of ancient mythology, and he has little that is natural or characteristic about him. He has passages of beauty, and advanced the cultivation of his native tongue; but his allegories are often inappropriate, and his sentimentality not very natural. Gyöngyösi is supposed to have been born in 1620, and from the early development of talent was called, as a page, to the Court of the Palatine in 1640. He gang the charms of the Palatiness, Countess Szécsi, as the Venus of Murány, so successfully, that she rewarded him with the village of Bábaluska. In 1681, he became a representative in the Diet, d2