Tóth, probably lost her chance of having her Shelley. CHAPTER XVIII. 1772-1825. The enlightened foreigner from France, England or Germany, reading about the allegedly great literary works written by Hungarians, Poles, Czechs or other nationalities who have so far not succeeded in playing first fiddle in the European concert, will probably indulge in a polite doubt as to the exceeding excellence of those works, not one of which has ever been spoken of in the columns of the leading papers or periodicals of London, Paris, Berlin, Rome or Vienna. In the preceding pages we have ventured to mention Pope and Shelley, and a few great German poets in the same breath with great Magyar writers. This may appear preposterous to Englishmen or Germans. Far from reviling them for that, we would rather hasten to add, that in a certain sense they are quite right. Pope’s genius is in one most essential point decidedly superior to that of Csokonai (see page 88). Pope’s best poems are not exclusively English in taste, subject-matter or form. They belong to that class of European literature, the best products of which may be relished with equal delight by Spaniards and Danes alike. They are European in character; and so much is this the case with the foremost of those writers, that Shakespeare, for instance, is far better known, by the youth at least of Germany, Austria and Hungary, than by that of England. In the great German writers there is little of that specifically German tone, which people other than Germans cannot very well enjoy. In Lessing there is no trace of the sentimentality and liquoriciousness of his native province; in Schiller there is not a trace of Suabian cunning or lumbersomeness; and Goethe might just as well have been born at Syracuse under Gelon, or at Athens under Pericles. Is there any trace of Puritanism, this the most specifically English feature of his time, in Shakespeare? The major part of the better writers of Hungary or Poland, on the other hand, have suffered their intense patriotism to make such inroads on the literary character of their works, that the latter frequently lose all their point to readers outside Hungary and Poland.