Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/72

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INTRODUCTION.

German poetess Gabriella Baumberg. Betrayed into hope by the superb display of Napoleon's power, and miscalculating the chances that the arms of the despot might serve the cause of liberty, he translated into Magyar, in 1809, the French emperor's appeal to the Hungarian people. When peace was restored, he hastened to Paris for security, where he found employment in a public printing-office. When the Austrians entered Paris, in 1814, they seized him as a state prisoner, and conveyed him home, whence, after another imprisonment, he was banished to Linz, where he still lives, struggling with misfortune. His literary influence would have been great could he have pursued his career, but it has been often interrupted and broken by cruel political visitations, which have flung him out of the sphere in which he was successfully labouring. In 1791 he published the poems of Anyos; in 1821 an address to the learned of his country, A' Magyar Tudósokhoz; in 1824 he reprinted Faludi's poems; his own works he is now engaged in watching through the press, but coming from the solitude of his retreat, it is only the voice of one crying in the desert "Prepare." Bacsanyi's sufferings were shared by Szentjobi Szabó (Lászlo), whose poetical merits were also of a very high order.