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CHAPTER IV

The Beginnings of Slovak Literature

Za tú našu slovenčinu (For our Slovak language) — the motto of the Slovaks in their present struggle for liberty.

THE language of the Slovaks, called by themselves "slo­venský gazyk," or "slovenčina," forms the transition from Czech to Wendo-Croat, and is not far removed from the liturgical dialect known as Old Slavonic. Its resemblance to Czech, and the fact that most Slovak writers previous to the nineteenth century employed the latter language, made the well-known philologist Dobrowský put forward the theory that Slovak was identical with Czech in its early stages.[1] At a later date he withdrew this theory and admitted Slovak to be a distinct Slav dialect[2]: and this has been placed beyond dispute by the development of the last half century. Dobrowský's original belief admits of a very simple explanation. Till the most recent times the Slovaks were without any literature of their own, and as they never attained to a distinct political existence, the Slovak language was deprived of all centripetal influences, and was hence affected by all the neighbouring languages and dialects. Apart, however, from various unim­portant nuances, three well-defined dialects of Slovak can be distinguished: — (1) Moravian-Slovak, in the counties of Press­burg, Nyitra and Trencsén and in some of the racial islets in South Hungary; (2) Polish-Slovak, in the counties of Sáros, Zips, Abauj, Zemplén and part of Árva.[3] (3) Slovak proper, in the counties of Turócz, Árva, Liptó, Zólyom, Bars, Nógrád, Pest and Gömör, which, forming the centre of the Slovak dis­tricts are naturally the best protected from alien influences.

Of all the surrounding languages, Ruthene, doubtless because the most backward, seems to have left least trace upon Slovak; and according to reliable information, the linguistic frontier between the Ruthenes and the Slovaks has moved no less than 30 kilometers in as many years at the expense of the former. Up to the fifteenth century all inscriptions in "Slovensko," are in Latin; but from that time onwards Czech influence predominates. The Czech language effected an entrance to­gether with Hussite tenets, and became the language in which the scriptures were read and the church services conducted. The materials for a national literature were entirely lacking, and the Reformation, which had so strangely depressing an effect upon literature throughout Europe, strengthened the sway of the Czech language among the Slovaks by limiting literary effort to devotional subjects. Meanwhile the schools which were founded in Slovensko during the sixteenth cen­tury[4] naturally concentrated their attention on Latin, in which all public business was conducted, administration and judica­ture alike. Printing presses were erected in the towns of North Hungary during the last quarter of the sixteenth century,[5] but as the German element was paramount in some, and grow­ing stronger in others, what was printed was almost entirely in German or in Latin. Pruno, who was pastor of Freistädl (Galgócz) till 1586, published a Latin-Slovak Catechism, and another pastor translated the Confession of the Five Towns into Slovak. But the neglect of the Slav language had become general, and Benedict!, in the preface to his Bohemian Gram­mar (1603), makes this fact the subject of a plaintive and some­what hopeless lecture to his countrymen.[6] It is doubtful whether his words produced much effect, for religious dissensions and the desolations of war proved fatal to all literary pursuits or interests for many decades to come. Just as the triumph of the Hussites had reacted upon " Slovensko," so the fall of Bohemia in 1619 had a depressing effect upon Slovak development. The troubles of the seventeenth century made all literature impos­sible, and among all the races of Hungary Zrinyi — now a bone of contention between Magyars and Croats — is the solitary literary figure. Such books as were published were more than ever of a religious or devotional character — a very natural revulsion of feeling from the horrors of the Thirty Years' War. While Paul Gerhart was composing the hymns which are still the glory of the Lutheran Church in Germany, George Tranowsky, pastor of Liptó St. Miklós, published in 1635 at Leutschau the first Czecho-Slovak hymn-book Cithara Sanct­orum, which has ever since been the favourite book of de­votion of the Lutheran Slovaks.[7]

"It was the impulse of religion which laid the foundation of native literature among the Slovaks."[8] Strangely enough, the Catholic Church and the Jesuits, who had been the foremost enemies of nationalism in Bohemia, were the first to encourage the Slovak vernacular, their chief object being doubtless the erection of a barrier against the heretical influences of the lan­guage of Hus. While the Protestants clung closely to the Czech language, the Catholic clergy began to write and preach in the dialect of the common people. In the year 1718 Alex­ander Macsay, a zealous Paulinian monk, published a collec­tion of his sermons delivered in the Western Slovak dialect as spoken in the neighbourhood of Tyrnau.[9] The Jesuit fathers of Tyrnau — then the chief stronghold of Catholicism in Hungary and from 1636 till 1777 the seat of her only University — fol­followed this up by publishing several religious books in a mix­ture of Czech and Slovak. Their common object was to win the sympathy and affections of the peasantry for the Catholic Church, and it is probable that their wise policy completed in many districts of the West the process which the more brutal methods of Leopold I and his advisers had begun. The re­vived interest in the vernacular is reflected in the preface writ­ten by Matthew Bel or Belius, the greatest scholar produced by Hungary in the eighteenth century, and himself a Slovak, to Doležaľs Slavo-Bohemian Grammar (1746). Here we read that not only scholars but even the magnates and lesser nobility of the northern counties prided themselves upon cultivating the Slav language.[10]

The movement once more languished, but bore fruit towards the close of the eighteenth century. A little group of Slovak patriots in the Tyrnau and Nyitra districts devoted itself to the task of linguistic revival. Its leader, Anton Bernolák, the Catholic priest of Ersek-Ujvár (1762-1813), published the first Slovak Grammar, and an elaborate Slovak Dictionary.[11] The Primate, Cardinal Rudnay, who deserves to be remembered for the defiant phrase," Slavus sum: et si in cathedra Petri forem, Slavus ero,"[12] became a generous patron of the move­ment; but progress was none the less slow, for Bernolák adopted a defective and illogical orthography, and made the still more serious blunder of selecting the western or Moravian dialect for his literary language. Still the Slovak literary society (Literáta Slavica societas) founded by him in Tyrnau, was flourishing enough to establish branches in five other towns of North Hungary, with book stores in each; and the berno­lačina, as it came to be called, produced a poet of some merit in John Holly, who sang the departed glories of the Slav race and chose Svatopluk and Methodius as the heroes of his verse. To him too the Slovaks owe translations of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Homer and Theocritus. Useful work was also done by Stephen Leschka (1757-1818), who translated Robinson Crusoe, brought out a dictionary of Magyar words derived from foreign, es­pecially Slav sources,[13] and was the editor of the earliest Slovak newspaper, the Prešpurské Nowiny, which appeared at Press­burg in 1783, but unfortunately only lasted for three years.[14]

Meanwhile the movement inaugurated by Bernolák had caused considerable alarm among the Lutheran Slovaks, who still wrote in Czech and strongly deprecated anything that might tend to weaken the intimate ties which bound the Slo­vaks to Prag. Religious jealousies, therefore, were probably partly responsible for the foundation of a literary society in Pressburg by Tablic and Palkovič. This society soon lan­guished, but its place was taken by the "Institute of Slav lan­guage and literature" which was established in 1803 in con­nexion with the Lutheran Lycée at Pressburg. George Palkovič was the first (and as events proved, the last[15]) to occupy the chair of Slav in Pressburg and to preside over the budding literary society. He and his assistant, Louis Štúr, the future leader of 1848 and the regenerator of the Slovak language, exercised a decisive influence upon the younger generation of patriotic Slovaks. But while Magyar societies, clubs and associations were founded in every direction during the thirties, and above all in the gymnasiums and university, Slovak so­cieties were discouraged and frowned upon. Permission for their formation was frequently refused, and between 1840 and 1843 Slav languages and literature were brutally ejected by the Magyar fanatics from the two chief centres of Slovak intelli­gence, the gymnasiums of Leutschau and Pressburg. Public opinion clamoured for the Magyarization of education through­out the country, and the Revolution when it came found the Slovak language expelled from all the seminaries and most of the gymnasiums of North Hungary, and in danger of being ejected even from the elementary schools, in favour of a lan­guage of which the masses of the people were entirely ignorant and which they had no opportunity of hearing in their ordinary daily intercourse. The Slovak language, which sixty years before had shown as much promise of development as the Magyar, was now utterly outdistanced; for the Magyar literary renaissance of the first half of the nineteenth century produced a number of poets of the first order, who would have won a European reputation if they had written in any Western tongue. Slovak on the other hand was paralysed by the un­favourable political situation, by the assimilation of the Slovak cultured classes, by the adoption of rival dialects by some of its foremost writers, and by the preference displayed by others for Czech literary forms.

A cruel irony of fate has ordained that the Slovaks should strengthen the cause of their opponents by supplying it with

its most redoubtable champions. Louis Kossuth, who pushed Magyar pretensions to their furthest limit, was of pure Slovak parentage. His father, who came from the village of Kosutý the county of Turócz, settled in the eastern county of Zemplén; but the young Louis sometimes spent his holidays at the house of his uncle, George Kossuth, who was a patriotic Slovak author of some; ability.[16] Louis attended the Slovak village school in Záturcs, and in the seventies his kinsman Alexander Liebhardt, the notary of Ruttka, used to show the Slovak primer from which the ex-Dictator of Hungary first learnt to read and write. It was only after his childish days were over, that Kossuth learnt the Magyar language, and in his position of advocate in the county of Zemplén, first entered the whirlpool of local poli­tics, from which he emerged as a striking combination of dema­gogue and Magyar Chauvinist.

Alexander Petőfi — the famous poet of the Revolution, who has sometimes been called the Magyar Burns, but who added to his great lyrical gifts the martial temperament of Theodor von Körner — was likewise of Slovak origin. His father, Stephen Petrovič came from the partly Slovak county of Nógrád, and his mother Maria Hrúz, from Liesno in Turócz; the young Alexander was born in 1823 in Kis Körös, where his father had acquired a butcher's business, and was sent to a Slovak school in Asód. It was only in his twentieth year that the son Magyarized his name; but the rapid march of events and the sudden success of his early poems, soon converted him into one of the fieriest champions of the Magyar cause. Those who bear in mind the origin of Kossuth and Petőfi, will certainly be tempted to dissent from the Magyar custom of referring to the "stupid Slovaks" (a buta tótok) and still more from the notorious Magyar proverb, "The Slovak is not a man" (tót nem ember).

While the Slovaks thus presented the Magyars with two of their traditional heroes, they, at the same time, produced two men of the highest literary eminence, who were destined to influence the entire Slav world and to contribute towards the great Slav revival of last century. These two men — Paul Joseph Šafárik and John Kollár — of whom the Slovak race has every reason to be proud, owed, not their reputation, but the rapidity with which it spread, to the fact that they wrote in Czech, not in Slovak.

Šafařík was born in 1795 at Fehérpatak (Kobeljarovo) in North Hungary, as the son of a Slovak Lutheran pastor. Even during his school days at Késmark, he developed a passion for Slav linguistic studies, and at the age of nineteen he published a small volume of poetry at Leutschau. After a couple of years spent at Jena University, he filled the post of tutor in a noble family, and as early as 1819 was appointed Rector of the new Greek Ori­ental Gymnasium at Újvidék (Neusatz), one of the strongholds of the Hungarian Serbs. After six years, his Protestantism, which had at first been ignored in consideration of his merits as a Slav scholar, induced the governing body of the school to remove him from the rectorate; and in 1832 he resigned his chair in order to accept a professorate in Prague. Here he gradually won. for himself a reputation and a respect which the cniel situation of his Slovak compatriots could never have secured to him in the country of his birth, and which culminated in 1848, when he acted as President of the famous Slav congress at Prague. Of his many literary productions, it will suffice for our present purpose to mention three. In 1823 he published the earliest collection of Slovak popular songs,[17] a praiseworthy ex­ample in which he was followed by the poet Kollár and the short­lived Slovenská Matica. Thus, though he turned his back upon his native Hungary, he did the Slovaks a real service in first bringing to light the inexhaustible treasures of popular poetry and folklore possessed by this interesting but all too neglected race.[18] In 1826 he published in Buda a History of the Slav Language and Literature, which was the first concrete at­tempt to treat all Slav dialects as mere members of a single organism, and which contains the germ of that " unio in littera­tura inter omnes slavos " which was afterwards preached with

john kollár.

such fiery and persuasive eloquence by the poet Kollár. Third­ly, in 1836 he gave to the world the first part of his Slav Anti­quities, which revolutionized the prevailing conception of early Slav history, filled Bohemia and Russia with enthusiasm, and still forms the groundwork for all students of Slavonic origins. In the linguistic disputes between the adherents of Bernolák, Štúr and Kollár, he endeavoured to steer a middle course. While admitting the great difficulty of maintaining unitiy of language, owing to the changes introduced by the Czechs into their written language, owing to natural evolution and to the lack of good school-books among the Slovaks, he strongly deprecated anything in the nature of a break with the past. His position in Prague naturally led him to look with anxiety upon any movement which threatened to impair the spiritual unity of Czechs and Slovaks. But he failed to reckon with the genius loci, and with the influence of geographical and political factors upon the Slovak standpoint. The adop­tion by Štúr of the Central Slovak dialect as the literary lan­guage, corresponded to an inward need, and was really the sole alternative to racial extinction; while the fear that this would undermine the mutual sympathies of the two sister races has proved to be entirely groundless.

John Kollár was born on July 29, 1793, at Mosotz, as the son of the local notary. He studied theology for five years at Pressburg and then spent eighteen months at the University of Jena, the alma mater of so many young Slovak Protestants. In 1819 he became assistant to Molnár, the pastor of the Slav con­gregation in Pest, and eventually succeeded him in that post, which he held until the year of revolution. Even as a boy he began to collect Slovak folksongs from the peasants as they worked in the fields; and his ardent and poetic temperament evoked in him a sensitive pride in all the traditions of the Slav race and a corresponding suspicion towards those races which had thwarted its unity in past ages. The energy with which he resisted all attempts to Germanize or Magyarize his congrega­tion in Pest, made him the object of frequent attacks, which he was only too ready to repay with interest. There was none of the typical Slovak submissivencss about Kollár, and indeed if his resolute and virile qualities had been commoner among his compatriots, the position of the Slovaks in Hungary would be very different at the present day.

As early as 1824 Kollár electrified the whole Slav world by his publication of the first three cantos of "The Daughter of Sláva " (Slávy Dcera), to which two further cantos were added in 1832. Though epical in conception, this poem is none the less lyrical in form, being composed of a succession of 622 sonnets grouped in five distinct cantos. Alike in form and in substance, it is possible to trace more than one re­semblance between Kollár and Petrarch, though, we need hardly add, the Lutheran pastor breathes a rarefied air very different from the sultry atmosphere of the southern lover's passion. The daughter of Slava is a maiden whom the poet meets on the banks of the Thuringian Saale, and to whom, as the ideal of womanly perfection, he dedicates his heart. Severed from her by a cruel stroke of fate, he wanders dis­consolate through the regions of the Elbe, the Rhine and the Moldau, and at length beside the Danube he learns of her death. This slender erotic thread is skilfully used by Kollár to connect the great memories of the Slav race and its de­parted glories. A rich and daring imagination is combined with purity of thought and classic accuracy of expression; and the poem is equally fertile in passages of lyrical beauty and of patriotic fervour. Its genuine poetic value will secure Kollár a permanent place among Slav poets; but its immedi­ate effect was not so much literary as political. Its glorifi­cation of the Slav name strikes the same lofty note in which Arndt not very long before had exalted the German Father­land. So long as the slave does not feel his fetters, Kollár cries, "so long he may find his position comfortable: and the despot is endured until the feeling for freedom becomes general. But then the slave breaks his chains, and the despot must fall. So it was with us (Slavs) in the matter of language." "Ye tell me, the law ordains that in Hungary the Slav should bury his language. But who forged this law? Men; and shall they weigh more than God? . . . and what is one to love most deeply, a puny dead and soulless country, or a mighty people full of life and reason ?"[19] "Grant not the soil on which we dwell the sacred name of fatherland. The true fatherland, which none can misuse, of which none can rob us ... we carry in our hearts. . . . Dear are the woods, the streams, the home inherited from our sires. But the sole fatherland which endures, and defies all shame and insult, is that unity of custom and language and mood which blends soul with .soul."[20] "Believe me, comrades and friends of the fatherland, to us has been given all that places us by the

side of the great races of mankind. Behold land and sea spreading far at our feet: silver and gold are ours in abun­dance, and busy hands skilled in art are ours. Concord alone, concord and culture are lacking to the Slavs. O that concord would spread her blessings amongst us, and we should excel all the peoples of the past. 'Twixt Greek and Briton our name too would shine, and lighten all the firmament."[21]

"Scattered Slavs," he cries, " let us be a united whole, and no longer mere fragments ! Let us be all or nought ! "[22] For this ideal fatherland of which Kollár sings, is Panslavia (Wsesláwia). Were the disunited Slavs but precious metals, he would mould them all into a mighty statue; Russia would form the head, the Lechs should be the body, the Czechs the arms and hands, the Serbs the feet, and of the smaller races he would forge armour and weapons: "All Europe would kneel before this idol, whose head would tower above the clouds and whose feet would shake the earth."[23] For a hundred years hence, what will be the fate of the Slavs, and what the fate of Europe? "Everywhere Slavdom like a flood extends its boundaries: and the language which the false ideas of the Germans held for a mere speech of slaves, shall resound in palaces and even in the mouths of its rivals. In Slav channels the sciences shall flow, our people's dress, their manners and their song shall be in vogue on the Seine and on the Elbe. Oh, that I was not born in that great age of Slav dominion, or that I may not arise from the grave to witness it."

Naturally enough, the enthusiasm with which Kollár in­dulged in these dreams of a great Slav future, was highly distasteful to the Magyars; and they revenged themselves by branding him as a political agitator. I should be the last to deny to Kollár this epithet. In the sense in which his enemies apply it, it is merely a slander launched by the strong against the weak. It is a reproach which has attached to every national poet of a downtrodden race, and in reality constitutes their greatest glory. For every true poet is an agitator, and Kollár in kindling the national spirit of his com­patriots and in bidding them base their national existence upon virtue, was only proving his title to the poet's laurel. Unhappily he was only too truly a member of the genus irritabile vatum, and he merely injured his own cause and played into the hands of his political opponents, when he indulged in violent diatribes against the Germans and above all against the Magyars.

The fourth and fifth cantos of the "Daughter of Slava" are devoted to the description of a half mythical Slav Olympus and Hades. In the former the Goddess Slava is seated on a golden throne, and round her are grouped the heroes and heroines of the Slav world, while a few distinguished guests who had interested themselves in the Slavs, are also granted admission.[24] A singular incident betrays the con­trast in Kollár's sentiments towards the Russians and the Poles. The Grand Duke Constantine, the former Governor of Warsaw, receives a golden-crown from the hands of the goddess, while Countess Plater, who had roused the Poles to resistance, is turned away from the gate. The final canto is full of undignified and even childish scenes; for the ideas which speak to us so eloquently from the golden verse of Dante or the austere frescoes of Orcagna, become a mere crude anachronism when clothed in the language of the nine­teenth century. All the ancient persecutors of the Slavs, from Árpád to Charles the Great, languish in a sea of burning pitch, and Beelzebub from the bank beats down each head as it appears above the surface. The Bohemian Jesuit who burnt 60,000 Czech books, is roasted on a pile of books and papers. Archbishop Patacsics scourges himself to atone for his treatment of the Serbs of his diocese.[25] A number of German savants have their tongues torn out, because of the hostile verdicts which they had passed upon the Slavs. The tailors of Schemnitz are punished for refusing to admit a Slav into their guild, and a native of Ärva is slit into meat for gulyás, because he educated his children in the Magyar language. A prominent member of the Lutheran Church who had written a pamphlet against the Slavs, appears with a huge nose, from which slices are carved by grinning devils. Dugonics, the Piarist monk, whose Magyar writings con­tain so much abuse of his Slav countrymen, stands as Cerberus at the portal, and barks incessantly at the swarms of flies and lice which molest him; while the author of the proverb, "The Slovak is no man," is impaled. Kollár, it is true, begs for his release, thus saving his character as a Lutheran clergy­man; but the poet's good taste should have saved him from the necessity. In short, the final canto is a lamentable pro­duction, and most readers who are not blinded by racial prejudices, probably read with a sigh of relief the final cry, "From the Tátra to the Black Mountain, from the Giant Alps to the Urals, resounds the word: Hell for the traitors, Heaven for the true Slavs ! "[26]

Only five years after the appearance of the final cantos, Kollár created a new and even more lasting sensation in the Slav world by his book Concerning Literary Reciprocity between the various races and dialects of the Slav nation (1837). The fierce controversy which has raged round this famous tract, is mainly due to the persistence with which friend and foe alike read into its arguments their own political dogmas and prejudices. Written with all Kollár's wonted fire and eloquence, it may aptly be described as a sermon on the text, "unio in literatura inter omnes slavos." "For the first time after many centuries, the scattered Slavs re­gard themselves once more as one great people, and their various dialects as one language, awake to national feeling and yearn for a closer union.[27] . . . The Slav nation strives to return to its original unity." But the common bond which is necessary for the attainment of this ideal, must be con­sidered more carefully, "for though innocent in itself, it might lead to many misunderstandings and errors."[28] This common bond is to be the interest taken by all the different Slav races in the intellectual products of their nation. "It does not consist in a political union of all Slavs, nor in dema­gogic agitation against-the various governments and rulers, since this could only produce confusion and misfortune.

Literary reciprocity can also subsist in the case of a nation which is under more than one sceptre and is divided into several states. Reciprocity is also possible in the case of a nation which has several religions and confessions, and where differences of writing, of climate and territory, of manners and customs prevail. It is not dangerous to the temporal authorities and rulers, since it leaves frontiers and territories undisturbed, is content with the existing order of things, and adapts itself to all forms of government and to all grades of civil life."[29] "Panslavistic," he defines as "that which concerns and embraces all Slavs."[30]

Kollár does not regard it as sufficient that an educated Slav should only speak his own dialect; he ought to know other Slav languages and act on the principle, Slavus sum, nihil Slavici a me alienum puto. Many hindrances, it is true, have to be overcome before this ideal can be realized. The prejudices of other nations against the Slavs, and still more the mutual contempt with which the various sections of the race regard each other, and the anarchical state of Slav gram­mar and orthography — these and other causes at present hinder Slav unity. "None the less," cries the enthusiastic poet, "all Slavs have but one fatherland," and just as the many differ­ent states in America together form a single unit, so the many Slav races and dialects ought to form " a single literary free­state, in which differences are ignored, and no tyrant is tolerated." Here the opponents of Kollár seem to find con­firmation of their worst suspicions; and yet the absurdity of describing his aims as political, is abundantly proved by the means which he recommends for their attainment. Book depots in the various capitals, free public libraries, chairs of Slav language and literature, a general Slav literary review, the reform of Slav orthography, comparative grammars and dictionaries, collections of songs, proverbs and folklore — this is a programme which no possible stretch of the imagination can regard as a menace to the peace of Europe. Indeed the political advantages which Kollár prophesies as likely to result from the movement are the very reverse of those at which genuine Panslavs, like Pogodin, Fadejev and Katkoff aimed. ”Slav risings against monarchs who belong to a different race and under whose sceptre they live, will come to an end; for when reciprocity prevails, the longing for union with other Slavs will cease, or will at least be very much weakened. They will have no motive for breaking away, and each will remain at home, since he will possess at home the same which he would receive at his neighbour's. Indeed, under alien non­Slav rulers, so long as they are tolerant, the weaker Slav races find better guarantees and security for the independence and survival of their language, which under the ruler of some other more powerful Slav race would, according to the laws of attraction, be entirely absorbed, or would at least commingle and finally vanish away. Those governments which care for the culture of their peoples, will not only not check and re­press this innocent and beneficial reciprocity, but will far rather foster and encourage it with fatherly concern."[31] This, then, is the much-abused Panslavism of Kollár, which aims at the Russification of Hungary and the world-dominion of the great White Czar ! If any further proof were needed of the groundlessness of the charges against the poet, it is supplied by his action in 1848. When the Chauvinism of Magyar public opinion made it dangerous for him to remain in Pest, he withdrew not to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but to Vienna, and died three years later as Professor of Slav language and literature in the Austrian capital.[32]

The plain truth is that the Magyars imputed to their Slav neighbours motives similar to their own. Themselves bent upon the complete Magyarization of Hungary, they assumed that the Slavs must be equally intolerant and equally deter­mined to secure a linguistic monopoly.[33] The rise of Slav nationality, due mainly to the influence of the French Revo­lution, was undoubtedly aided by Russian propaganda; but no external influences are needed to explain the appear­ance of the two chief apostles of Slavdom among the despised and unknown Slovaks. In accordance with a natural law, the modern flame of resistance was kindled in the darkest corner of the Slav world; and the sense of kinship triumphed even over differences of religion. The great idea of Slav solidarity, which Kollár did so much to awaken, has much in common with other Imperialist and national movements of the last century. The Magyars, in denying the right of the Hungarian Slavs to entertain such feelings, not merely shut their eyes to hard facts, but at the same time emphasize the contrast between the solidarity of the Slavs and their own isolation. A close affinity does exist among all Slav races and languages, and no amount of nicknames, still less of persecution, can ever destroy it. Of course their own lack of kinsmen makes it more difficult for the Magyars to comprehend the meaning of the saying, "Blood is thicker than water," and it is easy to sympathize with them in a deficiency which seriously weakens their political position. But as has been well said, the Pan-Magyar party only needs to regard its own flushed and angry countenance in the mirror of Panslavism, to be reminded that the phrase tu quoque is no argument. The Magyars outdistance most other races in the ardour, but also unhappily in the narrowness of their patriotism. Pride of race can go no farther, and argument is wasted upon those who regard as proofs of Panslavism the fact that a Slav professor corresponds with literary societies in Russia or Bohemia,[34] that a Slovak student attends the university of Prague rather than that of Budapest,[35] or even that some overgrown schoolboys burned Széchenyi in effigy in the course of a rowdy picnic party ! In short, loyalty to tradition, race and language is in the Magyar the most pure and exalted patriotism; in the Slav it is treason and infamy. Spuming all considerations of logic and pre­cedent, the Magyars plunged headlong into a policy of Magyarization, which was destined to bear bitter fruit in the near future.