Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/79

Rh where he was born, in a spot said to be one of romantic beauties.

's active spirit has poured upon his country many streams of foreign literature. His prose is admirable. He had to fight a hard battle in favour of improvements which the Hungarian language demanded, in order to accommodate itself to an improved civilization. The man who introduces one really useful word or expression into his native language, is entitled to great applause. It has been by a series of benefactions of this sort that our English tongue has become whit it is, and that it promises to go on gathering strength and riches with the progress of time. The foolish resistance to such melioration has left the French language in nakedness and poverty, unable to communicate a thousand shades of thought and feeling which find representatives in the greater opulence of other idioms. The prejudices of what is called nationality—a word the random use of which may to an unbounded extent impede good and encourage evil—are easily awakened; but Kazinczy has struggled successfully against them—and he has done well; for the author who gives to the mind any new instrument of power, who assists the development and the lucidness of ideas by finding appropriate