Robert Nisbet Bain

“ Petǒfi is as simple and genuine a poet of nature as Wordsworth or Christian Winther, and his erotics, inspired throughout by a noble idealism, have all Byron's force and fervour, though it is perhaps in his martial songs that Petǒfi's essentially passionate and defiant genius asserts itself most triumphantly. ”

“ Szerelme ès házassága (1846) , and many other volumes. The first edition of his collected poems appeared in 1847. Petǒfi was not yet twenty-five, and, despite the protests of the classicists, who regarded him with cold dislike, the best heads in Hungary, poets like Vorosmarty and critics like Szemere, already paid him the homage due to the prince of Magyar lyrical poets. The great public was enthusiastic on the same side, and posterity, too, has placed him among the immortals. ”

“ In November of the same year the restless poet quitted Pápá to join another travelling troupe, playing on one occasion the Fool in King Lear, and after wandering all over Hungary and suffering incredible hardships, finally settled down at Pesth (1844) , where for a time he supported himself by all sorts of literary hack-work. ”