It is even so with poetry. There is no poetry whatever in Nature. All poetry is invented and created by man, just as all music is. He who invents the greatest number of events, scenes, or types that strike men as being poetical, is the greatest of poets. It is impossible to say how he invents them; nor can he or anybody else say where, that is, with relation to what spot, creature, or phenomenon of Nature he will invent them. One thing alone is certain, he must _invent_ them. For centuries before Petőfi was born, Hungary had had the same mixed population; the same mountains; the same mighty rivers and lakes; and the same mysterious _puszta_, which to Petőfi suggested an astounding number of exquisite poems. He alone “understood their mystic language;” that is, he alone invented the poetry to the substratum of Nature; he alone wrote the thrilling drama to the dumb flies and staging of Nature in Hungary. He sees an old ram-shackle inn in the midst of the _puszta_. To the ordinary mortal the inn is suggestive of nothing more than the expectation of a poor dinner, of a bad bedstead, of uncanny companions. To an ordinary poet it may suggest images of decay or regret, more or less poetical. To Petőfi it suggests intensely poetical scenes of life exuberant or decadent; the inn (“_csárda_”) is transfigured by him into a living being; every one of its corners commences to breathe poetry, music, reminiscences and forebodings. So new and individual a creation is thus made of that wayside inn, that the painter may find in it new subjects for his canvas, and the musician new themes for his lyre. Wherever Petőfi is touched by nature or society, he responds by the creation of poetic phenomena. The wind blowing over the plains of Hungary is, in truth, inarticulate; in wafting through the body and soul of the incomparable poet it turns, as if directed through the pipes of an organ at the hands of a Bach, to melancholy fugues and majestic oratorios. And so with everything. Petőfi sings love in hundreds of poems, yet he was scarcely ever loved by woman. For nearer as woman is to Nature, she is also more realistic and less charged with poetry than man. What then could she do with one who had unloaded into the chests of his youthful soul all the treasures of poetry, but none of gold? This, however, far from deterring Petőfi or disgusting him, rather stimulated him. He loved much; that is, he loved little. Love was for him, like the _puszta_, the Theiss river and the Carpathian mountains, an immense suggestiveness; an ocean, the crossing of which led to the discovery of new continents of poetry. Nearly all the pretty or interesting women whom he met, whether the lawless gipsy-girl, the actress, the coy _bourgeoise_, the lady, the peasant-girl or the hostelry-maid, he loved them all or thought he did. And this was owing not to his extreme youth—he died when six-and-twenty—but to his passion for poetic creativeness. Everyone