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Baron Miklós Jósika, the Walter Scott of Hungary, was born at Torda, in Transylvania, on April 28th, 1796. While quite a child, he lost both his parents, and was brought up at the house and under the care of his grandmother, Anna Bornemissza, a descendant of Jókai's heroine of the same name in "'Midst the Wild Carpathians." Of the young nobleman's many instructors, the most remarkable seems to have been an emigré French Colonel, who gave him a liking for the literature of France, which was not without influence on his future development. After studying law for a time at Klausenberg to please his friends, he became a soldier to please himself, and in his seventeenth year accompanied the Savoy dragoon regiment to Italy. During the campaign of the Mincio in 1814, he so distinguished himself by his valour that he was created a first lieutenant on the field of battle, and was already a captain when he entered Paris with the allies in the following year. In 1818, at the very beginning of his career, he ruined his happiness by his unfortunate marriage with Elizabeth Kalláy. According to Jósika's biographer, Luiza Szaák,[1] young Jósika was inveigled into this union by a designing mother-in-law, and any chance of happiness the young couple might have had, if left to themselves, was speedily dashed by the interference of the father of the bride, who defended all his daughter's caprices against the much-suffering husband. Even the coming of children could not cement this woeful wedding, which terminated in the practical separation of spouses who were never meant to be consorts.

[1] Baró Jósika Miklós élete és munkai.

Jósika further offended his noble kinsmen by devoting himself to literature. It may seem a paradox to say so, yet it is perfectly true, that in the early part of the present century, with some very few honourable exceptions, the upper classes in Hungary addressed only their servants in Hungarian. Latin was the official language of the Diet, while polite circles conversed in barbarous French. These were the days when, as Jókai has reminded us, the greatest insult you could offer to an Hungarian lady was to address her in her native tongue. It required some courage, therefore, in the young Baron to break away from the feudal traditions of his privileged caste and use the plebeian Magyar dialect as a literary vehicle. His first published book, "Abafi" (1836), an historical romance written under the direct influence of Sir Walter Scott, whom Jósika notoriously took for his model, made a great stir in the literary world of Hungary. "Hats off, gentlemen," was how Szontagh, the editor of the Figyelmezö, the leading Hungarian newspaper of the day, began his review of this noble romance. Jósika was over forty when he first seriously began to write, but the grace and elegance of his style, the maturity of his judgment, the skilfulness of his characterization—all pointed to a long apprenticeship in letters. Absolute originality cannot indeed be claimed for him. Unlike Jókai, he owed very much to his contemporaries. He began as an imitator of Scott, as we have seen, and he was to end as an imitator of Dickens, as we shall see presently. But he was no slavish copyist. He gave nearly as much as he took. Moreover, he was the first to naturalize the historical romance in Hungary, and if, as a novelist, he is inferior to Walter Scott, he is inferior to him alone.

In Hungary, at any rate, his rare merits were instantly recognised and rewarded.

Two years after the publication of "Abafi," he was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy, four years later he became the President of the Kisfaludy Társaság, the leading Magyar literary society. All classes, without exception, were attracted and delighted by the books of this new novelist, which followed one another with bewildering rapidity. "Zolyomi," written two years before "Abafi," was published a few months later, together with "Könnyelmüek." Shortly afterwards came the two great books which are generally regarded as his masterpieces, "Az utolsó Bátory" and "Csehek Magyarországon," and a delightful volume of fairy tales, "Élet és tündérhón," in three volumes. In 1843 was published "Zrinyi a Költö," in which some critics saw a declension, but which Jókai regards as by far the greatest of Jósika's historical romances. Finally may be mentioned as also belonging to the pre-revolutionary period, "Jósika István," an historical romance in five volumes, largely based upon the family archives; "Egy kétemeletes ház," a social romance in six volumes; and "Ifju Békesi Ferencz kalandjai," a very close and most clever imitation of the "Pickwick Papers," both in style and matter, written under the pseudonym of Moric Alt. It is a clever skit of the peccadilloes and absurdities of the good folks of Budapest of all classes, full of genuine humour, and was welcomed with enthusiasm.

On the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1848, Baron Jósika magnanimously took the popular side, though he was now an elderly man, and had much to lose and little to gain from the Revolution. He was elected a member of the Honvéd Government; countenanced all its acts; followed it from place to place till the final collapse, and then fled to Poland. Ultimately he settled at Brussels, where for the next twelve years he lived entirely by his pen, for his estates were confiscated, and he himself was condemned to death by the triumphant and vindictive Austrian Government, which had to be satisfied, however, with burning him in effigy.

Jósika was to die an exile from his beloved country, but the bitterness of banishment was somewhat tempered by the touching devotion of his second wife, the Baroness Julia Podmaniczky, who also became his amanuensis and translator. The first novel of the exilic period was "Eszter," written anonymously for fear his works might be prohibited in Hungary, in which case the unhappy author would have run the risk of actual want. For the same reason all the novels written between 1850 and 1860 (when he resumed his own name on his title-pages) are "by the author of 'Eszter.'" In 1864, by the doctor's advice, Jósika moved to Dresden, and there, on February 27th, 1865, he died, worn out by labour and sorrow. He seems, at times, to have had a hard struggle for an honourable subsistence, and critics, latterly, seem to have been neglectful or unkind. Ultimately his ashes were brought home to his native land and deposited reverently in the family vault at Klausenberg; statues were raised in his honour at the Hungarian capital, and the greatest of Hungarian novelists, Maurus Jókai, delivered an impassioned funeral oration over the remains of the man who did yeoman's service for the Magyar literature, and created and popularized the historical novel in Hungary.

For it is as the Hungarian historical romancer par excellence that Jósika will always be remembered, and inasmuch as the history of no other European country is so stirring and so dramatic as that of Hungary, and Jósika was always at infinite pains to go direct to original documents for his facts and local colouring, he will always be sure of an audience in an age, like our own, when the historical novel generally (witness the immense success of Sienkiewicz) is once more the favourite form of fiction. Among the numerous romances "by the author of 'Eszter,'" the work, entitled "Jö a Tatár" ("The Tartar is coming"), now presented to the English public under the title of "'Neath the Hoof of the Tartar," has long been recognised by Hungarian critics as "the most pathetic" of Jósika's historical romances. The groundwork of the tale is the terrible Tartar invasion of Hungary during the reign of Béla IV. (1235-1270), when the Mongol hordes devastated Magyarland from end to end. Two love episodes, however, relieve the gloom of this terrific picture, "and the historical imagination" of the great Hungarian romancer has painted the heroism and the horrors of those far distant times every whit as vividly as Sienkiewicz has painted the secular struggle between the Red Cross Knights and the semi-barbarous heroes of old Lithuania.

R. Nisbet Bain.