Despite the very great advance made in the development of their literature up to 1830, the Hungarians were still wanting in one of the necessary elements of the growth of truly good works. Honest, just and well-informed criticism was wanting. Kazinczy, it is true, had in his extensive correspondence paid very careful attention to the critical examination of the prosody and language of his friends and pupils. Such external criticism, however, did not suffice. In a country, such as Hungary, where Greek literature was then known only to exceedingly few writers, the canons of criticism were easily neglected. Moreover, literature being still considered more as a patriotic than a literary function, poets did not, as a rule, tolerate even mild criticism. Yet without such criticism, Hungarian Literature was likely to deteriorate. Even men of genius are the better for good criticism. Yet they are the exception; and to the vast number of writers with talent rather than genius, criticism was, and always has been, the mentor whom they could not afford to miss. It has been one of the great advantages of French literature that its creative writers have nearly always been watched by great critical writers. From Boileau and Diderot, to Sainte-Beuve, the French have always had men of piercing and tasteful criticism, who controlled the works of the purely spontaneous genius. Nor can the literature of Germany congratulate itself on a more auspicious circumstance than the fact of Lessing’s incomparable activity as a critic at the very outset of the classical period. It is with regard to this historic value of sound literary criticism, that we must appreciate the work of the Hungarian writer forming the subject of the present chapter.