In his time it meant
breaking down the barrier which separated classes. He was the first in
the Chamber of Magnates who spoke in the tongue understood by the
people; hitherto Latin had been the language of the Chambers. With the
exception of a group of poets--Varosmazty, Petoefy, Kolcsey, and the
brothers Kisfaludy--there were hardly any writers who employed their
native language in literature or science. Count Szechenyi set the
fashion, he wrote his political works in Hungarian, and what was more,
assisted in establishing a national theatre.
There is perhaps no place where Shakespeare is so often given as at the
Hungarian theatre at Buda-Pest, and it is said by competent judges that
their translation of our great poet is unequalled in any language,
German not excepted.
To a foreigner the Hungarian tongue appears very difficult, because of
its isolated character and its striking difference from any other
European language. In Cox's 'Travels in Sweden,' published in the last
century, he mentions that Sainovits, a learned Jesuit, a native of
Hungary, who had gone to Lapland to observe the transit of Venus in
1775, remarked that the Hungarian and Lapland idioms were the same; and
he further stated that many words were identical. As a Turanian
language, Hungarian has also an alliance with the Turkish as well as the
Finnish; but there are only six and a half millions of Magyars who speak
the language, and by no possibility can it be adopted by any other
peoples.
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