all its time-honoured rules of etymology and syntax, as a matter of convention, and felt himself entitled to alter it as he thought best on purely rational principles. "In respect to languages," writes Kazinczy, "the supreme law is not custom, but the ideal of the language." There is a subtle but undeniable resemblance between Kazinczy's treatment of language and the well-intentioned and humanitarian, but tyrannical, rule of Joseph II. In both we see the attempts at generalisation and simplification which marked the French Revolution. Both men wished to get rid of traditions, and to replace them by logical systems, based on common sense.
Francis Kazinczy, the leader of the language reform movement, was not great as a poet, but was cut out for a reformer. He was full of enthusiasm, perseverance, and persuasive eloquence, and surpassed all his contemporaries in respect of learning and good taste. Without possessing any great creative genius, he became the centre of the literary world of his day; and, although he lived far from the capital, was closely in touch with everything going on there.
His life was divided into two periods by the tragic events connected with the conspiracy of Martinovics. Ignatius Martinovics, an abbot and a man of energetic and restless disposition, resolved, with several other malcontents, to spread the doctrines of the French Revolution. The men were rather ecstatic enthusiasts than real conspirators. They gathered the revolutionary doctrines into the form of a catechism, and Kazinczy copied the book. This proved disastrous to him.
The Austrian Court heard of the little band, and imprisoned Martinovics with all his fellow-conspirators. On December 14, 1794, Kazinczy was at his mother's
