There were no literary magazines in his time, and their place was filled by his correspondence. It is said that the large sums which he spent on postage, then very dear, added greatly to his difficulties.
As a poet, Kazinczy was at his best in didactic pieces; and as a prose writer, in biography. He died in 1831, during the great cholera epidemic.
Kazinczy saw clearly the part which he was called to play in literature. He once wrote: "We have merely commenced the work of reform. Our life has had to be spent in clearing and preparing the path of progress. But the time draws nigh when the sons of the gods will appear and cover Hungary with glory. Still, if the path has been made ready for them, the merit is ours."
And Kazinczy was right. Soon after him the "sons of the gods"—the great geniuses—arrived. The nineteenth century was the grand siècle of Hungary. It was the century of Vörösmarty, Petőfi, Arany, Széchenyi, Deák and Kossuth. Hungary, as we see her now, is the product of that age, which was richer in its results than any other since the foundation of the state.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, there seemed small hope of a better condition of things.
Herder, the greatest philosophical historian of the day, wrote in his principal work, "Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit" (1784–91), that the Hungarian people and language would probably die out. The situation in Hungary certainly appeared to justify that opinion, and patriots were sadly contemplating the possibility that the historian, who wrote without any ill-will, but merely as one expressing a philosophical conviction, might be right.[1]
- ↑ The words that so profoundly impressed the Hungarians were as follows: Die Ungarn "sind jetzt unter Slawen, Deutschen, Wlachen
