From the second half of the sixteenth century we possess a great number of rhymed stories, taken from the Bible, from foreign novels or from Hungarian history. One of the most famous of the authors of such stories was Sebastian Tinódy, whose “_Chronicle_,” or poetical narrative of contemporary events appeared in Kolozsvár, in Transylvania, in 1554. As a poetical work it is scarcely of any value, with the exception of the music accompanying it. As a faithful picture of the Hungary of that time it will continue to be valuable to the patriot and historian. The language is heavy; the form is unshapely. In some respects superior to Tinódy were Stephen Temesváry and Matthew Nagy de Bánka; the latter being the bard of the great John Hunyadi. One, Albert Gergei, of whose personal circumstances nothing is known, composed, chiefly from Italian sources, the story of a young prince fighting innumerable foes and surmounting difficulties of all sorts in search of the fairy whom he, in the end, does not fail to win. This story (“_Argirius Királyfi_”) has ever since the sixteenth century been the most popular chap-book amongst the lower classes in Hungary. Its _naïveté_ and good epic tone render it agreeable even to a more cultured taste. Another poet of the second half of the sixteenth century, Peter İlosvai, composed, probably from the floating folk-poetry of his age, a poetical narrative of the life of Nicolas Toldy, one of the most popular heroes of the Magyars, who lived in the fourteenth century, under King Lewis the Great, and was of Herculean strength. His feats are sung in İlosvai’s poem (published at Debreczen in 1574) in an effective, if rough, manner. A number of Magyar novels may also be found; but nearly all were translations from German or Latin novels of the time. The sixteenth century produced even a few Magyar works of historic and philologic character. John Erdősi, or Sylvester, wrote the first grammar of the Magyar language (1539); Gabriel Pesti gave, in 1538, a short dictionary of the Magyar language; John Decsi de Baranya published in 1588 a collection of about 5,000 Magyar proverbs; Stephen Székely de Bencéd and Caspar Heltai published “World-Chronicles,” in 1559 and 1575 respectively. Very many memoirs and journals of that time are still unpublished.