Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/71

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MAGYAR BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
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farther experiments in rhyme by introducing many of the stanzas of the southern nations of Europe. He exerted an influence greater than that of his writings in furthering the cultivation of the Magyar language, and pointing out to the young inquirers around him the pathway of taste and talent. He thus led forward Kazinczy and Dayka, two of the most accomplished and industrious writers of their age. Ráday had been educated in the University of Germany. He founded the excellent library of Péczel, and died in 1792.

To Bacsanyi’s history an interest, political as well as poetical, attaches. He was born in 1763, at Tapolcza, and first obtained great notice from his valuable contributions to the Magyar Museum from 1788 to 1792. He treated in them of poetry, morals, and general literature. He began a translation of Ossian, which he has lately completed. But his opinions made him at an early period the object of mistrust, and being associated with other enthusiasts in what was called the jacobin conspiracy of the Abbé Martinovics, in 1794, he was conveyed as a state prisoner, first to Munkács, and afterwards to Rufstein. He obtained his release in 1798, and took up his abode at Vienna, where, in 1799, be married the

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