CHAPTER X.
1711-1772.
1711-1772. The period bounded by the years 1711-1772 is one of decline. During these years, which comprise the reigns of Emperor Charles VI., and most of that of Austria’s greatest ruler, Maria Theresa (1740-1780), there was practically very little Magyar literature; and the little was bad. Hungarians of that period wrote, as a rule, in Latin; and the subjects they selected were those of laborious erudition; philology; descriptive natural science; annalistic history; historic theology. This decline in national literature was only another phase of the decline of the Magyar idiom. For, both in Transylvania, which was now again, as formerly, united with Hungary, and in Hungary proper, the Hungarian language ceased to be used in the schools, at the county-sessions, in the law-courts, and in polite society. In all these centres of intellectual intercourse, Latin, German or French were used instead of the sonorous language of Árpád. In Catholic and Protestant schools alike instruction was given in bad Latin. At the county-sessions; in the national parliament; and in the law-courts, Latin alone was used; while the higher classes of society were talking either in German or in French. For the latter fact, there is a simple explanation at hand. When, in 1711, Hungary was at last “pacified,” it had become evident to the most patriotic of the leading families, that further armed resistance to the Habsburgs being impossible, the only chances of promotion for their children were at the court of Vienna. This involved the adoption of Viennese manners, and Viennese mediums of conversation; that is, of French and German. No sooner was that done by the aristocratic families of Hungary, than the abnormal state of the then national literature revealed all its latent barrenness. As has been seen in the preceding chapters, all the great Hungarian writers from 1600 to 1711 were recruited from the class of the magnates. When, now, after 1711, the magnates flocked to Vienna, there to undergo a thorough process of Germanization, or rather Austrianization, there was no class of writers left in Hungary to take their place. Hence the sudden dearth of great writers, and the astounding decline of Hungarian Literature. To this must be added the fact, that German literature which was naturally destined to have a considerable influence on Hungarian writers, both from geographical contiguity, and on account of the general knowledge of German in the then Hungary; that German literature, we say, was not beginning to reach its classical period before the sixties of that century, and could therefore stimulate Hungarian Literature but very little. It is much more difficult to account for the exclusive use of Latin in the schools and in parliamentary debates. Had the use of Latin in the schools been accompanied by the study of Greek and Greek literature it would probably have wrought very much less mischief.
Unfortunately for Hungarian Literature, the study of Greek was almost entirely neglected in the last century. Graeca non leguntur. The immense power of æsthetic education inherent in Greek classical works could thus not benefit the Hungarians. Nay, it may be said in strict truth, that for Hungarians, naturally inclined as they are to grandiloquence and redundancy, both of words and thought, the study of Latin literature, untempered by that of Greek, was in many ways harmful. Many Latin poets and prose-writers lack that simplicity and moderation, which mark off Hellenic authors from all but the very best writers of all ages. The exclusive study of Latin was therefore doubly harmful to the Hungarians: first, in that it made them neglect their own language; and secondly, in that it supplanted the study of Greek literature. The exclusive use of Latin in all the schools and colleges of Hungary during the last century was, however, part of that general obscurantism weighing on all the educational institutions of the Habsburg empire. Both Charles VI. and Maria Theresa left the instruction of youths in the hands of monks and priests. Previous to the abolition of the order of the Jesuits (1773) that order had no less than thirty “gymnasia,” or higher colleges in Hungary. After its abolition, these colleges were placed in the hands of other orders, such as the Præmonstratencians, the Benedictines, Paulists and Franciscans. As in Austria, so in Hungary, the regular clergy, more still than the secular, attempted to shut off their pupils from the new light rising in France, England and Germany, and for that purpose the habitual use of scholastic Latin was one of the most efficient means. At the Protestant schools, of which the most famous were at Debreczen, at Sárospatak, and at Pozsony, in Hungary proper; and at Nagy Enyed, Kolosvár, Marosvásárhely, and at Udvarhely, in Transylvania, instruction was likewise given in Latin. Nor can it be seriously maintained that the Protestant teachers were more prone to let in the new light than were the Catholic.