from actual life. Tasso also depicts soldiers and Turks, but his writings reveal his ignorance of military life, and his Turkish heroes are mere opera-Turks. In the world of European literature Zrinyi stands high amongst those who can characterise whole races. We are struck by the truth and reality of his sketches of both Turks and Hungarians. He depicts battles, camp-life and councils of war, as one who knows them by personal experience, and who is as well acquainted with the enemy as he is with his own army. It may be that in many details Zrinyi unconsciously imitated Tasso, but for all that, he is thoroughly national and original. His work reveals the energetic, emotional yet laconic, and proud but generous Hungarian aristocrat and general, just as in the works of Tasso we detect the religious, highly refined, sensual Italian.
The martyr's death of the hero of Szigetvár was not really a decisive event, and did not mark a turning point in the history of Hungary, brilliant as it was as an episode of the Turkish wars. But the poet so groups the events as to give the incident greater importance. Zrinyi is made to appear as one who voluntarily sacrifices his life for the salvation of his country, and he is rewarded for this deed by a vision announcing that God accepts his sacrifice, and that after four generations have arisen, Hungary will be delivered from the Turk. The fourth generation was that to which the poet himself belonged, and it was as if by a prophetic inspiration that he foretold the coming deliverance of Hungary, for only his sudden death prevented him from seeing the realisation of his visions. Twenty-two years after his death, the fortress of Buda, which the nations of Europe had always regarded as the key of the Turkish dominion,
