officers? He could not stay in Vienna, so he returned to Hungary and retired to his estate, where he lived a lonely life, shut up with his books. As a Voltairian, he never went to church, and when he died, he was buried without any religious ceremony. His tomb is not in the churchyard, but in a garden under a tree. During the last few years of his life, Hungarian literature had begun to take a new direction.
Among those who were stirred into activity by Bessenyei were the clergy, and their superior literary education made them important factors in Hungarian life. Their studies were chiefly classical, so that when once they began to write, they naturally took the classical poets, and especially Horace, for their models. It must be remembered that during the eighteenth century Latin was so largely used in Hungary that it might almost have been regarded as a living language.
In the history of Hungarian literature, the poets who followed Latin models are designated by the name of "The Classical Poets." Their works, like most modern works in imitation of the Latins, are stiff, cold, somewhat too abstract, and naturally full of mythological allusions. The most noteworthy of the group was a monk of the Order of St. Paul, Benedict Virág, the "Hungarian Horace." He was full of genuine enthusiasm for what the Latins called virtus, but his poems impressed other poets rather than the general public. Before poetry could make any further progress, it was necessary to settle the rules of prosody. Hungarian poetry, like that of all modern nations, is based upon accentual rhythm, but when, in the sixteenth century, John Erdősi (or, in accordance with the latinising fashion of his day, John Sylvester) tried to imitate Latin verses, which are founded
