170 HUNGARIAN LITERATU RE His first novel, Aba.ft, is perhaps the most important of his works. Its scene is laid in Transylvania in the six teenth century. We are shown the menta l development of a young nobleman, wh ose life is finally crowned with the bliss of an ideal love. Abafi lives a somewhat loose and frivolaus life, but one day he finds a littie child abaodoned in a wood, takes it into his care, and acts towards it as a father. The good deed gradually reacts upon his soul . He begins to reflect, to work and to cultivate his talents, and becames a distinguished man . His evol ution is aided by his love for a noble minded woman, and also by the tyranny of the ruler, which awakens his courage an d energy. Jósika's chief merit was that he revíved the past, although he was often superficial both in depicting character and the period. He was fertile in plots, and described a great number of historical figures and epochs. He took up, later, the soc ial novel as weil as the historical, but he wrote more than he ought to have written, in that respect also resembling Sir Walter Scott. Another novelist, who succeeded Jósika, wro te with far profaunder insight. This was Baron JOSEPH EőTvős (I8I3-I871). One day at the boys' high school in Buda, the head master adrnitted a littie boy of eleven to one of the classes and gave him a seat on the front bench. N o wonder, for the boy was the son of the distinguished and powerful Lord Treasurer, Baron Ignatius Eőtvős. But a curious thing happened. Directly the new boy sat down, the other boys ali stood up and left the bench. There was only one opportunist littie Jew who stayed on the same bench with bim, as though guided by a presentiment that his neighhour was one day to be the legistator who
