ments of bon-ton. No wonder that the impressionable youth was carried away, the more so as he soon acquired a thorough knowledge of German and French, and was able to read the German humanists and French encyclopedists in the original.
This new tendency of the human mind was so revolutionary in its nature, that it naturally hastened the coming of political revolution. The "rationalism" of which men were so enamoured was really a revolt against the authority of mediæval traditions. Religious intolerance, blind submission to authority, superstition, especially that most shameful superstition—the belief in witchcraft—mental and political slavery; all found ardent and brilliantly clever adversaries in the French encyclopedists.
Bessenyei threw himself into the new movement, and in his day-dreams, saw a flourishing Hungarian literature, and a vigorous mental life, with himself, perhaps, as the Voltaire of Hungary, for its centre. In co-operation with a few other Hungarian Lifeguard officers, Bessenyei formed a small literary circle. It was strange that Vienna, the very centre of hostility to every national effort, should be the scene of the revival of Hungarian literature.
Voltaire used the stage as the platform for the dissemination of his ideas. Bessenyei resolved to do the same. His first work, which was published in Vienna in 1772, and which marked the commencement of a new chapter in the history of Hungarian literature, was entitled The Tragedy of Agis. The theme resembles that of a play by the German Gottsched, but Bessenyei follows the form of the French tragic poets. He observes the "three unities," and adopts a contemplative, argumentative style and a refined, courteous tone, but his tragedies lack the psycho-
