Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/62

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
INTRODUCTION.

as Magyar verses, and these also are to be found in his works.

Gvadányi is one of the few, the very few, comic poets of the Magyars. His account of the life, death, and journey to Tartarus, of a village notary,[1] is witty and amusing, though not always in good taste. In his adventures of Count Benyóvsky, and his Paul Rontó, which are the delight of the lower orders of the Hungarians, he is coarse and vulgar, and his composition is throughout careless and incorrect. He was born at Rudabánya in 1725, entered the army in his 19th year, made many campaigns, and underwent the discipline of wounds and imprisonment; became a general in 1773, and died at Skaliz in 1801.

Bessenyei has been accused of supplanting a greater evil by a lesser one, instead of getting rid of both, when he drove out the Zrinian to introduce the Alexandrine measure. The charge appears to me well founded. The Alexandrine

verse is one of the most monotonous of the

  1. It is in three parts:
    Falusi notárius' Budai utazása (Presburg, 1790).
    Falusi notárius' pokolba menetele (Basil, 1790).
    Falusi notárius' elmélkedése, betegsége és halála (Poson,
    1796).