On Eötvös, as a writer on politics, and the Philosophy of History, see page 251. It may here be mentioned that Eötvös, who was President of the Academy, was frequently called upon to deliver commemorative discourses on the lives and merits of deceased members of the Academy and the Kisfaludy Society (see page 113). His speeches are, as a rule, of great oratorical power, and illuminated with grand conceptions of Life and Literature. He was eminently an orator, not a rhetor; and although he seldom reached the magnificence of Kölcsey (see page 107), he is no unworthy follower of him. CHAPTER XXVI. At the present day most people of culture outside Hungary know the name of Jókai, the Hungarian novelist; few, if any, know the name of Sigismund Kemény. Yet, of the two, Kemény is probably the greater writer. He is the Balzac of Hungary, less Balzac’s fame. For, strange to say, in Hungary itself, the novels of Kemény are very little known; and although several Magyar critics of the highest authority have declared Kemény to be the greatest novelist of the Hungarians, yet the reading public in Hungary neither buys nor reads the masterpieces of the Transylvanian baron. This lack of general appreciation seems to be somewhat inherent in the very kind of genius possessed by men like Balzac and Kemény. The former, it is true, has a well-known name, and his works have spread over Europe and America. Yet, even in France, the full grandeur of his genius has not yet been recognized. Balzac has, as yet, no statue in Paris, which city he has described more ingeniously than any other writer. Even in his native town of Tours his statue was erected only in quite recent times. The _Académie_ has never admitted him within her circle; and the French are not yet aware that in Balzac they have their Shakespeare in prose. Indeed, nobody short of Shakespeare will stand comparison with the gigantic genius of Balzac. Both have created a long series of grand types of humanity endowed with an undying life and charm of their own. To both the secrets and puzzles of the human soul were transparent; and both had the powers of philosophic analysis and poetic synthesis in equal shares. Shakespeare, too, had to bide his time; and twenty-eight years after his death, John Milton does not even mention his dramas as necessary reading for a young gentleman’s education. Considering, then, the fate of Balzac in France, with an eager reading public immeasurably more numerous than that of Hungary, we need not wonder that Kemény suffered with tenfold intensity from the drawbacks peculiar to his Balzacian genius.