This literature is both in extent and quality, one of the most remarkable of the lesser literatures of Europe. The number of writers of Magyar works is no less than 5,000; and their works cover all the provinces of poetry and of philosophic, historic or scientific inquiry into nature or man. While accepting the standard of criticism adopted by the recognized arbiters of literary greatness, we have no hesitation in saying that Hungarian Literature has a number, if a limited one, of stars of the first magnitude, and no inconsiderable number of lesser lights. This fact acquires still greater importance from the consideration that the bulk of Hungarian Literature properly speaking dates back little over a hundred years; and that many, far too many Hungarians have, up to recent times, left their native country and, writing their works in German or French, added to the literature of nations other than their own. Comparatively few, exceedingly few, Englishmen have enlisted among the writers of nations outside the United Kingdom; very many, exceedingly many Hungarians have, under stress of various circumstances, written in Latin, German, French or English, and thereby reduced the bulk and often the quality of Hungarian Literature proper. The number of works in Magyar published from 1531 to 1711 is 1,793. During the same period 2,443 non-Magyar works were published in Hungary. The preceding two totals were given in 1879 and 1885 respectively. Up to April, 1897, 404 more works had been discovered, belonging mostly to the class of non-Magyar books printed in Hungary down to 1711. When, however, we inquire into the number of works written by Hungarians and published outside Hungary, down to 1711, we learn that no less than about 5,000 works were written and published by Hungarian authors, in 130 non-Hungarian towns, during the period ending 1711.[1] At a time when all the western peoples had long ceased to use Latin for all literary purposes, the idiom of Cicero was still the chief vehicle of thought in Hungary. Nearly all through the eighteenth, and during the first quarter of the present century, the number of works written by Hungarians in Latin far outnumbered the works written by them in Magyar. It was even so with German; and many a famous German author was really a Hungarian; such as Ladislaus Pyrker, Nicolaus Lenau, Klein (J. L.), the great historian of the drama, Charles Beck, the poet, Fessler, the historian, etc.