with a constant succession of adventures demanding resource and courage. We seem to breathe the bracing air and the fresh scent of the meadows in those poems. In one song, he, like Othello, bids adieu to life in the tented field; he also bids farewell to Hungary, the bulwark of Christianity, and the home of heroes; to his comrades, whose fame is sung even in far distant lands; to his swift "eagle-winged" charger; to the groves and banks, to his friends, and to his many enemies.
The poems written during his wanderings form a class quite distinct from the rest of his work; they are full of yearning for the distant Fatherland and his dear ones there. "A pilgrim in far-off lands, soberly apparelled and gloomy in heart, longing for the wings of a bird, that he may fly to those he loves."
In all his troubles religion was his one consolation. He was chiefly a religious poet, and in that respect was a characteristic product of his times. The unrestrained vehemence of his feelings, the feature of his character, which in his private life proved a blight, was an advantage in his poetry. He was one of the first who prepared the way for the expression of genuine feeling in poetry. But his verses are not only remarkable for their sincerity and depth of feeling, but also for their technique. What a difference between the prosy language of Tinódi and the graceful stanzas and sonorous rhymes of Balassa!
There is one other new feature in his poems—a sense of the beauty of nature. Appreciation of the beauty of nature seems to have awakened at the dawn of the New Age, and Balassa was the first among Hungarian poets to give expression to it; it attained its greatest perfection in the nineteenth century in Petöfi, who is unrivalled in his
