Arany is, almost exclusively, a poet of epic songs, epics proper and ballads. Of the former his most finished works are the Toldi Trilogy, consisting of “_Toldi_” (the name of the hero, published in 1847); “_Toldi szerelme_” (“The love of Toldi,” published in 1879); and “_Toldi estéje_” (“The eve of Toldi,” published previously in 1854). These three epics, written in rhymed six-feet stanzas of eight lines each, tell the life-story of an historic Magyar peasant-hero of the fourteenth century, in the times of King Lewis, justly called the “Great.” He is of herculean strength, of violent temper, but good-hearted, simple, a loving son, and a loyal friend and subject. His struggle against his wicked brother; his love for Piroska, whom, in a passage at arms, he foolishly wins for another wooer; his despair at seeing the idol of his heart the wife of another; finally, his declining years when he finds himself out of accord with the changed times, and retires home to be put into the grave he had dug for himself. Such is, in the main, the contents of the three epics, into which the wizard language of Arany has infused the charms of real poetry. It would be idle to compare Arany’s art with that of Goethe’s “_Hermann und Dorothea_.” Goethe’s hero too is rather a peasant farmer than a _bourgeois_. Yet all the other figures of Goethe’s masterpiece are endowed with life so intensely _bourgeois_, as to secure admiration for the work in all times to come. Arany’s hero; his dear old mother; his brother; his love, etc., scarcely leave the boundaries of peasant-world; and while his epic will thus for ever charm the youth of Hungary, it may in future cease to be an object of lasting admiration on the part of the more mature classes of the nation.