Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/67

Rh scenes, and dreaming of the events of ancient Dacia, his mind was soon wholly engaged in antiquarian studies. The Brit of his romances, which obtained distinguished attention, was his Etelka. (Poson, 1787.) He wrote many dramas, but they have little value, and several prose histories. The most valuable by far of all his productions is his Magyar példa beszédek és jeles Mondások, a very useful philological work. He wrote less for the highly cultivated than for the middling classes, among whom he labored with great effect. He was a man of fine presence and ready wit, and he died, after a happy old age, in 1818.

had, in 1760, opposed the universal employment of hexameters, and introduced with much acceptableness many of the ancient measures. A classical school soon grew up. Its leaders were Baróti Szabó, the translator of Virgil, a man who was thoroughly imbued with the characteristics of the Augustan age, and who, by dint of labour, managed to give specimens of most of the ancient forms of verse; Rájnis, not a great poet certainly, but an agreeable poetical painter; and the third, Revai, an admirable translator, and a grammarian, whose writings on language have