But he soon left the army in order to devote himself to painting. He lived for some time in Vienna, gaining a livelihood by his brush, until some "hazy longing," as he describes it, lured him forth again into the wide world. For a year he rambled about in Italy, but in 1817 he returned to Pest, where he lived in very humble circumstances. An honest cobbler gave the young artist shelter, and helped him to sell his pictures. Even as a painter Charles Kisfaludy was a true son of his time; he painted fantastical landscapes, moonlight scenes, or Gothic ruins, in the style of the Viennese school.
But suddenly there came a change in his life; he ceased to work only with the brush, and took up the pen as well. While living at the house of the poor shoemaker he wrote a play, which was performed by a company that had recently arrived at Pest from the country. The effect was electrical. The Tartars in Hungary (1819) was the first Hungarian play that contained real dramatic action. From this time Kisfaludy's career was assured. He wrote one play after another, and they were all acted with increasing success. It was one of the great achievements of his life to create a public interested in the Hungarian drama, which had hitherto remained crude and undeveloped.
In Hungary the course of development of the drama was the same as in other countries. There, too, the Mystery play was the germ from which it sprang, and the drama was originally in the service of the Church—ancilla theologiæ. But in Hungary the development was not continuous, and the secular drama was slow in coming to maturity, because there were very few purely Hungarian towns in the Middle Ages; the greater part of the burgess class was German, and there can be no drama without town life.
