A History of Hungarian Literature/Chapter 9
IX
THE LANGUAGE REFORM
At the commencement of the nineteenth century Hungarian literature presents a remarkable phenomenon. In the course of a few years the literary language was so entirely transformed, that practically a new tongue came to be at the service of poets. As culture and literary taste spread, and authors grappled with the theory of art and of poetry, it became more and more evident that the Hungarian language was neither rich enough, nor polished enough, to express all the new ideas which increased culture had called into being. Many new words and technical expressions were needed. The process of enriching the language by the instrumentality of literature, was called "the Language Reform." The effort was crowned with victory in the decade 1830–1840, when Count Stephen Széchenyi was endeavouring to reorganise the state, really to create a new Hungary. For the new country a new language was a necessity.
The greatest reforms are linked with the name of Francis Kazinczy (1759–1831). It is true that before his time some authors had invented and used new words in their writings, but the commencement of serious reform is marked by the appearance of Kazinczy. At first he had enormous difficulty in overcoming the opposition which he aroused. In some provinces, indeed, there was such strong opposition to his ideas that his works were burnt by the public hangman. Hungarian autbors were now divided into two hostile camps. The "orthologists" thought that the language should remain as it was, both in quality and in quantity, while the "neologists" joined Kazinczy in his endeavour to increase its range by introducing new words and expressions.
Before Kazinczy died the Reform had triumphed, not in all points indeed, but as a principle, and practice quickly followed. Many new words created during this period of word-manufacture have since entirely disappeared, but the fact remains that some six or seven thousand words, rich in meaning, were permanently added to the language through the efforts of the reformers. How many words were lacking in which to express even the commonplace details of the life of a cultivated society, can easily be understood when we find that in speaking of the theatre, for instance, a Hungarian had no native words for "theatre," "actor," "curtain," "part," "character," and had to employ foreign ones.
Other languages, such as German and English, had the same difficulty, but they simply took over some Latin or Greek word, and as these remained uninflected, the foreign nature of the word was less apparent.
Another circumstance which added importance to the work of the reformers, was that even the already existing treasures of the language had not been systematically collected and arranged. There were no good dictionaries and no works on philology. The valuable material of the popular idiom was not easily available, and the reformers frequently wasted time in creating words through their ignorance of existing ones. A third fact which gave impetus to the reformers was that many Hungarian words were too long to be easily used in verse, the length being due to the so-called "agglutinative" character of the language.
The reform entirely changed the language. In new books there were a great number of words of which the previous generation had never heard. As one author said, with little exaggeration, sometimes the reader hardly understood what he read, there were so many strange words in it. Of course this autocratic way of making words which people scarcely understood, was only possible with a language like Hungarian, where by means of different affixes any number of new words can be made. The mistake of the reformers was that they sometimes added syllables which had never before existed, and which they invented, as, for example the affix—da. Sometimes, again, they cut off one part of the word, and treating the remnant as a complete word (though often it was a mere meaningless stump) they used it as a basis for the fabrication of fresh words. In other cases they translated a foreign word literally, though this did not suit the genius of the Hungarian language at all, but Kazinczy hoped to transplant the beauty of foreign languages into his native tongue. The idea of collecting the obsolete but purely Hungarian words used by old authors, and bringing them into fashion again, was much more commendable.
The mistake, then, of these reformers was that they did not consider the natural laws of Hungarian etymology, while it was their great merit that they did actually succeed, within so short a time, in creating a complete literary language. The success of the reform was simultaneous with the intellectual and political progress which marked the early part of the nineteenth century.
By the middle of the century, however, it was felt that the transformation of the language had gone too far, and a salutary reaction set in. Of course, the best poets had always been moderate in their employment of new words. John Arany, the most consummate artist in language, was strongly opposed to exaggeration. But the event which, more than any other, served to establish a reasonable mean, was the appearance of a philological periodical, the Magyar Nyelvőr.
Its editor, Gabriel Szarvas, was not only a most profound student of philology, but he was endowed with a kind of sure linguistic instinct, which guided him in his judgment as to what should be excluded and what would really prove of value to the language.[1]
Gabriel Szarvas commenced his activity at the time when the great statesman, Francis Deák, was restoring the ancient Hungarian laws and constitution. What the statesman did for political laws, the philologist endeavoured to do for the laws of his native tongue. For this end he strove in his periodical, which became the chief organ of the reaction.
Francis Kazinczy, on the other hand, was a child of the eighteenth century, which was characterised by grand and bold ideas, but which lacked appreciation of lawful organisation or historical continuity. His ideas concerning language reform displayed the spirit of the time, the age of the French Revolution. The conviction that language must be freed from obsolete conventions and made a more rational and useful organ, for the benefit of all, had its origin in the rationalism of the eighteenth century.
Men's minds were dominated by a highly abstract conception of the equality of all human beings, an equality not only of rights but of nature. They were so entirely possessed with this notion that they would not concede the existence of deep-seated racial and individual differences. Neither would they acknowledge the strength of historical conditions, the power of habit and convention, or the modifying influence of natural environment. They ignored the fact that in the development of a people there is an unbroken chain of cause and effect, each event following naturally from the preceding one, so that a nation's present is but the fruit of its past. Since all men are equal , they thought, every law which does not recognise that equality must be altered.
In this work of reform only pure common sense or reason was to be consulted. Whatever conflicted with pure reason must be transformed. All the most weighty institutions, such as religion, the State, the constitution, and moral laws, they urged, were based on convention. But things created by convention can also be changed by a fresh convention as soon as reason finds it advisable. Was not religion invented by the priests, kingship by tyrants, the state by the aristocrats, and language by a few of our intelligent ancestors? Why, then, should not these obsolete institutions be replaced by others?
Kazinczy's language-reforming plans were based upon a similar highly speculative and rationalistic notion. He considered the whole of the existing language, with 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 house, when suddenly twelve lancers drew up before it, took Kazinczy prisoner, and carried him to Buda in chains. The death sentence was passed upon all of them. Martinovics and the other leaders of the conspiracy were executed, but Kazinczy was spared, and his sentence commuted to imprisonment.
For some time he was confined in the fortress of Spielberg, near Brünn, which afterwards witnessed the sufferings of Silvio Pellico. Later he was taken to Kufstein, in the Tyrol, and to Munkács, where, some years later, Ypsilanti, the Greek patriot, was imprisoned. For some months he was denied writing materials. He therefore wrote with his own blood, or with the rust of his chains dissolved in water. At length, after a confinement lasting six and a half years, he was set at liberty. It was during the long years of solitude in prison that his schemes for the reform of the language ripened in his mind, and the moment he was free he went home to his small estate in the country, and commenced to labour for their accomplishment. His aim was twofold: he desired to raise the level of literary taste, and to embellish the language. He translated a great many of the master pieces of foreign literature and began to write critical essays on the works of contemporary Hungarian authors. In a very little while he became the highest literary authority. All the writers appealed to him for advice and criticism. As he lived in the country, his activity involved a great deal of correspondence, and he is the most voluminous letter writer among Hungarian men of letters. Except Voltaire, no literary man has written more letters than he. The collection of them, shortly to be published by the Hungarian Academy, will form twenty-five to thirty large volumes.
There were no literary magazines in his time, and their place was filled by his correspondence. It is said that the large sums which he spent on postage, then very dear, added greatly to his difficulties.
As a poet, Kazinczy was at his best in didactic pieces; and as a prose writer, in biography. He died in 1831, during the great cholera epidemic.
Kazinczy saw clearly the part which he was called to play in literature. He once wrote: "We have merely commenced the work of reform. Our life has had to be spent in clearing and preparing the path of progress. But the time draws nigh when the sons of the gods will appear and cover Hungary with glory. Still, if the path has been made ready for them, the merit is ours."
And Kazinczy was right. Soon after him the "sons of the gods"—the great geniuses—arrived. The nineteenth century was the grand siècle of Hungary. It was the century of Vörösmarty, Petőfi, Arany, Széchenyi, Deák and Kossuth. Hungary, as we see her now, is the product of that age, which was richer in its results than any other since the foundation of the state.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, there seemed small hope of a better condition of things.
Herder, the greatest philosophical historian of the day, wrote in his principal work, "Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit" (1784–91), that the Hungarian people and language would probably die out. The situation in Hungary certainly appeared to justify that opinion, and patriots were sadly contemplating the possibility that the historian, who wrote without any ill-will, but merely as one expressing a philosophical conviction, might be right.[2]
The same fear, giving rise to gloomy forebodings, is to be seen in the writings of the poet Daniel Berzsenyi, who said, in one of his odes (To the Magyars), that "Hungary could not be destroyed by the wild hordes of the Tartars, nor by the world-subduing might of the Turks. Civil wars were not able to ruin her, because her ancient virtue remained alive. But now the slow, subtle poison of degeneration is paralysing her, and if virtue is utterly lost, then the realm, though mighty as Rome herself, is doomed to perish. With the Hungarians of to-day, Attila could not have conquered Europe, Árpád could not have won a home for his people, nor Hunyadi have driven back the Turks. When once degeneration sets in the end is not far off. On the page of history it is written in letters of fire, that a nation once stricken with that blight must perish, as Troy and Babylon, Carthage and Rome, perished."
John Kiss, an author of the same period, wrote to his friend Kazinczy, referring to Herder's words, "However sad it may be, I also prophesy the annihilation of my country."
A learned cavalry officer, Joseph Csehy (who was soon after killed by a Russian bullet during Napoleon's Russian campaign), was once sitting in a public library, reading Herder. Andrew Dugonics, University Professor and novelist, happened to enter the library at that moment and Csehy pointed out the words of Herder to him, adding with a sigh, "The sun of our nation's life has set." To this Dugonics angrily replied: "Don't believe that stupid German, he lies!" The dialogue is characteristic of the temper of the times, when a fraction of the people, more by virtue of temperament than of reasoning, believed in their country's future.
But a change was at hand. At the beginning of the century it seemed as if all was lost, but in fact all was won. The day of greatness had been silently preparing. An awakening and stirring were going on in the hearts of men. The sentiment of patriotism was slowly gaining strength and finally became irresistible. And as though Nature knew what high aims had to be attained, she brought forth a greater number of eminent men in a few decades than she had formerly produced in centuries.
To this age belongs Vörösmarty, the first great classical poet of Hungary. He was born in the first year of the century. But before him, others had begun their work, and in 1802 appeared the first of the poems which were to become known and enthusiastically loved by the whole nation, Himfy's Love by Kisfaludy. Nature brought forth her gifted children in quick succession. In 1803 Kossuth was born, and in the next year Deák. Soon after came Eötvös, Liszt, Arany and Petőfi. In 1825 Széchenyi, destined to be Hungary's greatest reformer since the time of St. Stephen, stepped forth upon the stage of public life. The year in which Arany's masterpiece, Toldi, made its appearance, saw the birth of Munkácsy, the famous painter.
Hungary's three greatest poets, Vörösmarty, Petőfi, and Arany, happened to be contemporary with her three greatest statesmen, Széchenyi, Kossuth and Deák. Those men together, by herculean efforts, managed to awaken the country from its torpor, and to fill men's hearts with hope. They organised the population into a true nation. By their wisdom they created a future for their country, and by their poetry they surrounded it with glory. One sign of the country's awakening was the rapid development of the capital, Pest, which had not yet been amalgamated with Buda to form the present capital, Budapest. At the commencement of the nineteenth century Pest had no more than twenty thousand inhabitants, white at its close the population numbered more than half a million.
The greatest transformations took place in the realms of politics, literature and social economy. The chief political reforms are linked with the name of Kossuth. For many centuries, Hungary had not been a democratic state, for the nobles and landed proprietors possessed many important privileges which were denied to the rest of the population. The people were divided into different social layers, each endowed with its special rights or burdened with its special duties. All this came to an end through the activity of Kossuth. The various classes were fused together into one great community: the nation, with equal rights and equal duties (1848).
In one of the lectures which Kossuth delivered in England he gave an account of this great national transformation. "Excepting the burgesses of the privileged towns, the nobility and the gentry were the only classes that fully enjoyed the political and social rights conferred by the constitution. But those privileges were not reserved only for the eldest son as in England. In Hungary, every member of a nobleman's family inherited all the rights and titles of his parents. Accordingly the privileged class had grown exceedingly, and numbered from five to six hundred thousand persons, nearly as many as the burgesses in England. But one day the Hungarian nobility, like the Phoenix in the fable, lit with its own hand the fire which consumed it as a separate, privileged class, and they rose from its ashes, as an integral portion of one large free community. Liberty, equal rights, equal duties for all citizens, without any distinction on account of race, language or religion, those were the fruits borne by the events of 1848. We gave up our prerogatives, our privileges and immunities, which we saw were harmful to the rest of the community, and declared that we would take upon our own shoulders our fair share of the duties and burdens of the state. By means of equitable laws we enabled all the people to share with us our rights, and all the blessings of our country and constitution. We called them to be our brothers, one with us in the enjoyment of personal, religious, social and political freedom; to be as entirely equal with us in these respects as we all are equal, whether king or beggar, rich or poor, in the certainty of death and in the common hope of a life beyond the grave."
When society had been reconstituted in 1848 upon this new basis, there yet remained one great task to accomplish, to secure the independence of the new state in the face of Austria and the other countries of Europe.
The work was done by Deák. His great achievement was the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867. Amidst the labyrinth of circumstances he found the right clue. He was able to weigh the strength of the country against the dangers of the situation. His unrivalled power of judgment, his wise and perfect self-restraint, and his quiet but indomitable energy made Deák's work as great a masterpiece of statesmanship as the works of the poets, his contemporaries, were great in the real ms of verse.
Literature sprang into life and grew with amazing rapidity. The different, and often antagonistic literary schools, the popular, the high-classical, and the national, became united. Whatever was weak or false in them vanished. Ali that was really valuable developed to a higher degree. Just as through Kazinczy a rich prose language was gained, so now, by the powerful creations of Vörösmarty, a brilliant and purely Hungarian poetical language was called into life. The poetry of the new era had two roots; one drew the living sap from Latin soil, and the other struck deep into the native earth. Latin influence predominates in the earlier poems, but it yields to the growth of a distinctly national spirit and style.
Every modern nation has had to pass through the study of the classical poets before attaining to its own highest literary development. The Latin races completed that part of their preparation at the time of the Renaissance, and naturally had a flourishing literature long before the Hungarians, who took up the study so much later. In Vörösmarty, the first poet of the great age, classical influence is still predominant, but later, in Petőfi and Arany, we see the triumph of the new spirit.
The more fruitful source of the new poetry was purely national. The great literary transformation which is indicated by the poetry of Petőfi and Arany may be described by saying that they used and transfigured the popular traditions, folk-lore, and ballads, raising them to the highest level of poetry.
Hungarian literature is, in fact, the record of Hungarian patriotism. The ideas of nation, fatherland and race are much more pronounced in it than in other literatures. It is quite natural, for we always cherish more anxiously what we are in constant danger of losing, than the most precious treasures which we can quietly enjoy in the security of unchallenged possession. These features also are uppermost in the popular tales and ballads, as we saw when considering the Kurucz poetry. Every innovation in the way of culture was first looked at from the point of view of the patriot, who asked, how far did it strengthen the nation? Science, art, literature were all estimated according to the probability of their developing the national sentiment. This was the one test by which to try the value of everything. In Hungary it was never l'art pour l'art. What in other countries were merely refined pleasures, became in Hungary patriotic duties. Art and literature ministered to patriotism, and patriotism ministered to the preservation of the race.
No more touching example could be quoted than that of Alexander Körösi Csoma, the learned explorer. That heroic scholar bade farewell to his fatherland for ever and travelled from Transylvania, through Alexandria, Nineveh, and Bokhara to India, doing a great part of the journey on foot, and suffering greatly from hunger, disease and the deadly climate, in order to penetrate to the Himalayas. This task, in which he was generously aided by England, was undertaken with the object of discovering the origin and cradie of the Hungarian race.
Széchenyi, the reformer, was the hero, and the martyr, of one idea, that of the nation's advance. Th is great man, who devoted his whole life to the service of reform and progress, exclaimed once in Parliament: "I admit that I would not value any advance which was not markedly national in its character. The national sentiment is the foundation of the state. Without it, we shall become a 102 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE mere conglomerate of populations. It may be that our wealth would increase, but this prospect does not attract me. Before aU else, fidelity to my race l " Progrss, in any department of life, was but a means to the preservation of the race. This appears to have been the centr.d idea in Széchenyi's mind, as in the minds of his contemporaries, and when that idea came into con tact with other noble ideas, it helped to atrengthen them. The rearing of the edifice of the new state demanded incalculable labour, enterprise, self-denial and self sacrifice. It is an old idea, which exists in th e popular legends, that to make the foundations of a building strong, the sacrifice of human life is necessary. True it is that the Hungary of to- day has been baptize d with the blood of her ch ildren. The sacrifice which her establish ment demanded, and which was ungrudgingly given, was the lives of her nobiest sons. So great a result could only be achieved by a combina tion of spl endid talents and great ch:1racters. Sacrifice we see everywhere, fro m the time when · Kazinczy was flung into the fortress of Kufstein, to the time when Madách, also. confined in a political prison, wrote his immortal Tragedy of Man. Many a poet besides Kazinczy and Madách found his way into prison : Verseghy, Ba csányi, and Szentj óbi-Szabó, who died in his chains. Half a century later, Petőfi, Hungary's greatest lyric poet, died on the battlefield, laid low by a Russian hullet or the lance of a Cossack. The greatest statesman, Széchenyi, in consequence of mental strain due to exces sive labour and anxiety, los t his reason . The nobiest patriats were írnprisoned or exiled. Naturally the great sons of this great epoch ware filled THE LANGUAGE REFORM 103 with enthusiasm, a nd ali that was finest and best in the mind of statesman or poet was codensed into the one ideal of serving the fatherland. We can hardly find anather age in history which, doring a time of peace, can show such splendid examples of exalted patriotism, as the period between 181o and 1848. And the hearts of other men must have been great to have enabled them to understand and value these patriots. The men implicated in the Martinovics conspiracy were executed at the Vérmező, in Buda. One by one they fell, Sigray, Laczkovics, Szentmarj ay, wh o wh en preparing to place his bead upon the block, whistled the Marseillaise, the noble dreamer Hajnóczy, and last, Martinovics. Next day, in the very ground which had drunk their blood, rose trees were planted, bearing sweet scented flowers. Like these, the flower of Hungarian poetry sprang from the blood of the martyrs. Th e present generation knew but one of those great pioneers in perso n, Francis Toldi, the first writer in Hungary on the history of literature. The veteran soldiers of England could not speak with more venera tion of the victorious heroes of Trafalgar or Waterloo than Toldi spoke of his great contemp oraries, the two Kisfaludys, Kazi n czy, and Vörösmarty. Kazinczy, in spite of his keen eritical faculties, was capable of great enthusiasm. A good Hungarian poem moved bim to tears merely because it was Hungarian, and on seeing some new building erected to beautify his country, such as the cathedral at Esztergom, he hurst out into ex clamations of joy. About the end of the eighteenth century a young Hungarian gentleman went to Transylvania, the part of the country which, though inhabited by many foreign HUNGARIAN LITERATDRE races, had kept its political independence the l ongest. He writes : " It was at sunset that I reached the summit of a bill where Hungary and Transylvania touch one another. I stopped awh ile, for both before and behind me there opened a grand view, which nevertheless made my heart ache. To the west I saw my cou ntry, with her wide-stretch ing plains, which I had to leave. To the east lay Transylvania, with a line of dark blue hills in the distance, her u nduJating surfa ce swelling like the waves of the ocean. "My heart also began to s well at the thought of parting. To take in th e pictu re around me, I threw myself down upon the ground, just on the frontier line ; my bead and my heart rested on the soil of that dear fatherland which my next step would leave behind. Tears fell from my eyes upon the uttermost sods of my cou ntry, and at that moment I resoh·ed that I, a descen dant of those who had conquered this land, even thou gh a nametess child of the middle cl ass, would work with ali my might, even if silently and unobtrusively-I would work like the silkworm, spioning fro m the su bsta no:e of my own heart what might serve my ill-starred nation, if aught that I could bring of inspiring wo rd or true deed migh t prove of service." The you th, who was not Iess inspired by poetic geniu s than by fervent patriotism, did actual ly spin the silken thread of wh ich he had dreamed, and weave it into fabrics of beauty. He was Alexan der Kisfalu dy, the author of Hiuify and one of the pioneers of the nine teenth cen tury. In 1818, at Athens, a yonng Hungarian traveller (styled by the Greeks " the English lord " on account both of his weal th and his dress) was musing amid the ruins THE LANGUAGE REFORM 105 of the city. " Is this," thought he, u the fate of so glorious a nation ? " And th en he vowed that he would sacrifice ali he possessed in order to raise his country, to inspire it with hope and confidence, and to lead it towards a prosperous future, even though he had to do it alone. A wooderfui resolve, but yet more wooderfui is it that the traveller fuifilled his promise. This young man's name was Stephen Széch enyi, the fou nder of modern Hungary. Hungarian Iiteraturc rea ched its high est level in the forties of the nineteenth century. The enthusiasm of the Ieaders gradually took possessi on of aU men's minds, and in the middle of the century a n ew ideal-th e demoeratic -s uddenly appeared. Those two ideals, patriotism and democracy, seized and dominated the minds of leaders and people alike. The voice of the lcaders rang out and awake ned an ever-widening circle of echoes. Literatore was the first to respond ; then the Press, which was just heginning to be a power in the lan d, awoke. Great orators helped in the work of stirring the hearts of the people. No wooder if, from th is hot, teeming soil, poetry suddenly sprang up, like a tropical flower of rapid gro wth and fascinating beauty. Su ch a fcrtilé soil was needfui for the develop ment of the national poetry, which, in its highest phase, is repcesented by Vörösmarty, Petőfi and Arany. The second great ideal was that of demo cracy, wh ich captivated the mind of Europe. The peasan t class carne into fashion in politics, as weil as in art and literature. The poetry of Arany and Petőfi had its origin in the popular tales and ballads, and it seems almost as if their poetry were but the ennobiing of these. u It is of no use denying it," writes Petőfi to Arany. Io6 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE "Popular poetry is the true poetry . We must strive to as s ure its supremacy in literature. When once the people begin to reign in p oefry, they will be nearer to that political power wh ich it is one of the aims of the century to give them." Arany said " Amen l " The same year in which Petőfi wro te this (1H47), Edward Szigligeti's first popular play, The Horse-Herd, was performed. Szigligeti introduced the peasants on to the stage and showed them in dramatic co nflicts as the centre of serious interest ; before his time they had only furnished the episodic humoraus elements in a play. JOHN ERD:l l: LYI (t814-1868) bega n a work simitar to that of Bishop Percy in England . He studied folk-lore and colleeted a number of songs, tal es and ballads, which had previously been disdained. In his preface he de clared that the collection formed one link of the chain wh ich would bind the different classes of the community together. Th e two great currents, the demoeratic and the patriotic, united, and augmenting each other's powe r and rapidity, gave new direction and force to Hungarian gen i us.
- ↑ Gabriel Szarvas (1841–1895) was a touching example of untiring energy and fervent love of study. Though quite unable to read or write, in consequence of the increasing weakness of his eyes, he succeeded, with the assistance of his wife, in finishing the first half of a very large dictionary.
- ↑ The words that so profoundly impressed the Hungarians were as follows: Die Ungarn "sind jetzt unter Slawen, Deutschen, Wlachen und anderen Völkern der geringere Theil der Landeseinwohner und nach Jahrhunderten wird man vielleicht ihre Sprache kaum finden."
Some decades later even (1821) Goethe said of Hungary, "A country wonderfully rich in blessings. 'Tis a great pity it cannot progress."