216 HUNGARIAN LITERAT URE out. If it were so, it could be reawakened by the poems of Petőfi. AU that is great and bright in youth, its gen erous emotions, its ardour, and sensitiveness, its feverish energy and its purity, its recklessness and its exaggerations, are to be found in bim. If we wish to estimate his talents, we ought to compare his poetry with the works wh ich other great lyric poets have written before their twenty-sixth year. If we did so, we sh ould realise how phenomenal was his ge nius. Two perso nalities seem to have been blended in bim. One resembled the brass statue in Budapest, which shows Petőfi as the brillian t orator and leader of the people, who by his eloquen ce awakened the wildest enth usiasm, the bearer of the ban ner of freedom and revolution. But there was another Petőfi, the contemplative poet of the old gard en at Koltó, th e poet of Nature and Love, who wh ile he saw the early snow on the mountains, and the first touch of autumn on the trees in the park, carried summer in his heart-who fett ali that is sweet and grand in life, and who expressed his mortal feelings in immortal verse.
