The rapid growth of Hungarian Literature since 1825, shows chiefly in works of poetry proper; that is, in verse. Hungarian prose had in the first ten years of this period received no development similar to that of Hungarian verse. Yet many a writer had tried his hand at the creation of Hungarian literary prose. The reason of this belated advance of Hungarian prose was owing mainly to the late introduction of the Magyar language into the schools. Not before a language has hewn its way through the thickets of philosophy, the subtleties of distinctions in physics and chemistry, or the awkward bulkiness of historical facts, will it be supple and flexible enough to do efficient service for the innumerable needs of prose. Without a prose ready for all the turns and twists of serious thought, great historical or philosophical works are almost impossible. The difficulty was overcome in Hungary by applying prose first to novels, and then to History or Philosophy. Novels and romances, taking as they do the place of the epics in olden times, have also a national or more than literary importance. And we find that nations without great epics are also, as a rule, without great novels of their own. The astounding progress made in Hungary in epic literature proper bade fair to inaugurate the forthcoming of a novelistic literature. Vörösmarty and Czuczor were soon to have their followers in prose—the novelists. The frequency of rich types in Hungarian society could not but favour that branch of literature. In fact, the greatest difficulty for Hungarian novelists then, and to a large extent even now, was not to discover and work out a good subject, but to hunt up a sufficient number of readers. In the thirties and forties of this century, most of the cultivated individuals in Hungary were so familiar with German and even with French, that they could and did easily gratify their novelistic appetites with the innumerable products from the pens of German and French novelists. People will seldom relish or crave for lyric or epic poems of nations other than their own. They will ordinarily prefer homemade verse. With novels it is quite different. There is scarcely any exaggeration in stating that Lord Lytton’s novels have been read more extensively in Germany and Austria-Hungary than in England. The same applies respectively to George Sand, the French, and Mme. Flygare-Carlén, the Swedish novelist. Hungarian novelists had, therefore, to contend against formidable competition from abroad. But there was another and equally grave difficulty to conquer. The public in all countries has a fatal tendency to take up one author as the “standard” author in a given department of literature, and to give all other authors in the same field the cold shoulder. The less intense the interest which the public takes in that department, the more it will be inclined to believe in the “standard” man. In Hungary, that evil tendency has wrought great injury to novelists.