We began our characterization of Petőfi by saying that he, perhaps alone amongst Hungarian writers, completely blended Hungarian with European elements. We may now state the reason of this his peculiar excellence. Petőfi, like all classical poets, while very great as a master of form, owes less to the beauty or ornaments of his language than to the objective beauty of his imagery, personifications and poetic scenes. For such as largely identify literature with great word-feats, Virgil will be greater than Homer (as was commonly believed in the seventeenth century); Tennyson greater than Shelley; Platen greater than Heine; and Arany (see page 194) greater than Petőfi. This is, however, not the judgment of such as gauge poetic greatness by the measure of objective beauty contained in a given work. The importance of form in poetry can hardly be exaggerated, and the necessity of paying the closest attention to the rules of form will be felt by no one more keenly than by the student of Hungarian Literature. Yet in attempting to find a measure of comparison between great poets, who all more or less excel in form, there can be no doubt, that he who is richer in objective beauty is also the superior poet. It is this superiority that raises Petőfi head and shoulders not only over the rest of the Hungarian poets, but also above most other poetic writers of modern Europe. The types of the _puszta_, which we have essayed to sketch above, the women, and events of his time; all these and many more Magyar subjects were by Petőfi so _objectivated_, and given an independent poetic existence of their own, that they cease to be familiar to Hungarians only. They grow on the German, French or English reader with equal sympathy, and Petőfi thus needs less commentary for the foreigner than any other Hungarian poet. His works are like the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, which appeal to Americans with the same irresistible force as to Magyars, as the present writer has had abundant opportunity of experiencing in the United States. Yet the same Magyar melodies and turbulent cadences that Liszt, and Liszt alone, succeeded in _objectivating_, utterly fail of effect in countries other than Hungary when played by Hungarian gypsies in unadulterated Magyar fashion. This, then, is the deepest and truest secret of Petőfi’s immense power: while embracing mostly Magyar subjects, he so _objectivates_ them as to render them enjoyable and sympathetic to non-Magyar readers too. National poets inferior to Petőfi give their nation songs which other nations too possess, and the only difference between them is that of language. Petőfi gave Hungary and the rest of the civilized world what no nation other than the Hungarian possesses. As the Hungarian nation itself has an individuality so marked and so different from the other nations of Europe, as to entail upon it an historic and social vocation _sui generis_, so the poems of Petőfi, as the most felicitous exponent