It would be impossible, to write even the shortest sketch of Hungarian Literature without dwelling on one of the less conspicuous, yet chief sources of suggestion and inspiration of Hungarian poets. We mean the _folk-poetry_ of the Hungarian people. Now that we can study that poetry in numerous and comprehensive collections, published by John Erdélyi (1848), Paul Gyulai and Ladislas Arany, John Kriza (1863), Lewis Kálmány, Coloman Thaly (in English, the collection of L. Kropf and W. Jones, “Magyar Folk-tales,” 1884), etc., etc., we cannot but acknowledge the profound effect that these countless poems, ballads, songs, fables, epics, and ditties must have had on the minds of Hungarian poets who spent their youth in the midst of people singing, reciting or improvising them. In intensity of colour, in fire and varied picturesqueness, Hungarian folk-poetry is certainly not inferior to that of the people of Italy. In humour and exuberant audacity it is probably its equal. But while Italian folk-poetry frequently stoops to the indecent and obscene, it may be said without fear of contradiction, that such stains are unknown to the folk-poetry of the Magyars. In it lives the whole life of that nation, its sorrows and humiliations, as well as its moments of triumph and victory. The complete ethnography, historic and present, of the Magyars could be gleaned from that poetry. Nay, so intense is the poetic feeling of those lowly and obscure peasant-poets, that every object of the rich nature of Hungary has been framed and illumined by them. The _puszta_, and the two mighty rivers of the country; the snow-clad Carpathians, and the immense lake of the Balaton; the abundant flora and fauna of their land—all is there, instinct with poetic life of its own, and embracing, sympathizing or mourning the life of the shepherd, the outlaw (_betyár_), the lover, the priest, the trader, the Jew, the constable, the squire, the maiden, the widow, the child. There is in that folk-poetry a tinkling, ringing and pealing of all the bells and organs of life. Like the music that almost invariably accompanies it, it is teeming with intense power, and hurries on over the cascades of acute rhythms, and the rapids of gusts of passion. As if every object of Nature had revealed to it the last, brief secret of its being, it describes scenes and situations in two or three words. Its wit is harmless or cruel, just as it chooses; and in its humour the laughing tear is not wanting. Chief of all, as the great pundits of Cairo or Bagdad, whenever they are at sea about some of the enigmas of the idiom of the Koran and the Makamat, send for advice to the roving Bedouins of the Arabian deserts: so the Hungarian poets have gathered their best knowledge of the recondite lore of the Magyar idiom, in the _pusztas_ of the _Alföld_, between the Danube and the Theiss, where the true Magyar peasant is living.