I 1 



KAZINCZT, FERENCZ. 



KEAN, EDMUND. 



he carried hit point, an J that " few men have ever had so luge a share 

 in the formation, it might almost bo eaid in the manufacture of a 

 languor*," a Kazincsy. He wai dintinguished from bit namesakes 

 amooghu own kin a* " Kaiincsy a nyelvnu-agi'.. 1 ' Kaxinczy, the latiguag*- 

 oarver. While \>a*j with hit translations be did not omit to employ for 

 his purpose the influence of periodicals. He established at Casohau in 

 178$, with his friend* Sxabo and Baosanyi, the first Hungarian magazine, 

 the ' Magyar Museum,' which has left so good a memory behind it that 

 the leading maguine now published at Perth, the ' Uj Magyar Muzeum,' 

 or ' New Magyar Museum,' is named aftr it The editors however did 

 not agree, the work came to an end, and Kasinczy then published 

 alone the ' Orpheus ' in 1790. In that year the emperor Joseph died ; 

 his decrees against the Hungarian language might be said to have died 

 before him, and many of his other innovations were at once rescinded. 

 Kaxinczy lost bis post of inspector of schools on the ground of his 

 being a non-Catholic, but he was encouraged to hop* for another 

 place in compensation. After the short reign of Leopold he presented 

 himself as a petitioner to the emperor Francis when he came in 

 June 1792 to be crowned at Buda as king of Hungary, and the 

 emperor told him that the place he asked for had been given to his 

 friend Hajnoczy. '.' Your majesty," replied Kazinczy, " could not 

 have chosen a better man." Struck with his generous spirit the king 

 replied, "If I sea yon ten years hence I shall not have forgotten your 

 words, and to show how I appreciate them I will appoint you to any 

 other post you name." Probably no other eligible pout was at that 

 time vacant, for the first favour that the king had an opportunity of 

 granting the author appears to have been his rescue from the scaffold. 

 Hajnoczy engaged in what is called the "Jacobin conspiracy" of 

 Martiuovicf, a plot, the history of which is still enveloped in much 

 darkness, but which at all events involved the formation of secret 

 societies who distributed catechisms of the rights of man, which in 

 those days the ruling powers might be expected to view with sus- 

 picion. The principal members were men of learning and attainments ; 

 Martinovics, the leader, enjoyed from the court the revenues of the 

 abbey of Sosvar, and was director of the royal cabinet of natural 

 history. When the conspiracy was discovered, Kuzinczy, who had 

 been led into it by Hajnoczy, \vas arrested at hia mother's resilience 

 at Lower llogmecz, on the night of the 14th of December 1791, and 

 carried to Buda for trial. Uue of his fellow-prisoners, who was 

 father of a family, implored him to be firm and not to disclose any- 

 thing as the result would be general ruin, Kaztnczy therefore denied 

 all knowledge of anything treasonable in the first instance and after- 

 wards found that this very father of a family had himself given 

 way and made a merit of denouncing him. He then revoked his 

 former denials aud threw himself on the mercy of the king. On the 

 8th of May 1795 ho received sentence of death, he appealed, and 

 the sentence was confirmed by a superior court. Finally, after a 

 period of trying suspense, Martinovics, and six others, one of whom 

 was Hajnoczy, were beheaded at the castle of Buda, and the sentence 

 of the remainder, of whom Kazinczy was one, was commuted to 

 imprisonment "till they had shown signs of sufficient penitence." 



Kazinczy spent in the dungeons of Buda, Brunn, Kufstein, and 

 Uunkacs the long period of 2387 days. At first his confinement was 

 very severe, he passed some of the early mouths at Brunn in a damp 

 underground dungeon, where his limbs became so crippled that ha 

 could not rise from his bed of straw, but wherever he went he gained 

 the good will of his keepers, indulgences were more and more allowed 

 him, and at hut he spent some of his hours of imprisonment in 

 translating Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' in the course of which 

 the well-known passage on the Captive must have forcibly struck 

 him. We are told in the tenth edition of the ' German Conversa- 

 tions-Lexikon ' that a diary of his imprisonment was published at 

 Festh in 1818, the year of the Hungarian revolution, by Vahot In 

 the collection of his familiar letters published in 1843 and 1845, there 

 is very little allusion to this gloomy hiatus in his career. Soon after 

 his liberation in 1801 he married Sophia, the daughter of his old 

 friend and patron Count Lajos Tbrbk, and for the remainder of his 

 life he was established at his country-residence in ' Szephalom,' or 

 < Fairhill,' in the neighbourhood of Tokay, a name which has become 

 classical to the cultivators of Hungarian letters. He saw springing up 

 round him a literature every year growing in extent and value, 

 couched in the very language which he had had so much hand in 

 forming, and his voice was the most influential in the award of 

 Hungarian fame. He was a frequent contributor to the Hungarian 

 periodicals, the 'Krdelyi Muzcum' and the ' Tuilomanyos Gyujte- 

 ineny,' and to the Vienna 'Jahrbiicher der Litteratur,' and his 

 attention was always alive to any new appearance in the field of 

 Hungarian poetry. He was the friend of almost every author of note, 

 of Alexander Kisfaludy till the freedom of his criticisms offended 

 him, and afterwards of Charles Kisfaludy at his own eager request. He 

 edited the works of Dajka, Baroczi, and Kin, and of Zrinyi the poet, 

 as he is called to distinguish him from his ancestor Zrinyi the warrior, 

 and he published a volume of reprints of old Hungarian grammars 

 under the title of ' Magyar Begisegek es KitkoMuok,' or ' Magyar 

 Antiquities and liarities. His own poems are chiefly of the class of 

 Horatian epistles, in which a mild philosophy and a system of nathetiot 

 an illustrated and enlivened with frequent references to bis personal 

 experience, but one set of short poems under the title of ' Tuvieok 01 



Viragok,' ' Thorns and Flower*,' is of a more epigrammatic and lively 

 character. He was fond altogether of the epistolary form his chief 

 original prose work, the ' Krdelyi Levelek,' or ' Trausylvanian Letters,' 

 is an account of a tour in Transylvania which he effected in 1810, aud 

 which he thus described to give him a better opportunity of inter- 

 mingling his own personal recollections with tho narrative. These 

 letters however, which were originally intended for the press, are uot 

 so attractive to read as his real correspondence with his friends, kis 

 and Szent Qyurgyi, the former himself a poet of some note, in which 

 there is a running commentary on the progress of the Hungarian 

 language and literature for a period of about forty years, intermingled 

 with glimpses into the interior of a happy home enlivened by the 

 presence of a large sod united family. On the whole, cheered by 

 the constant progress of Hungary, his life pasted happily, and sur- 

 rounded by honours. The only great drawback to his welfare was a 

 lawsuit, in which, after the death of his father-in-law, he was obliged 

 to engage with his wife's brother for his wife's inheritance. It was 

 decided in his favour in 1829 after a contest of nineteen years, but as 

 he mournfully observed, " nineteen years are gone, my children have 

 not had tho education that I should have given them otherwise, I 

 have uot led the easy life that I should have led, had I been able to 

 draw my income, and I have been plunged in debts, out of which I 

 shall never emerge." On the establishment of the Hungarian A< . 

 in 1830 an event which he saw with joy he was the first < 

 member. In 1831 he published his last work, ' A Tour to Panuou- 

 halma.' The appearance of the cholera drove him home, and iu 

 Hungary the cholera led to savage outbreaks on the part of the 

 peasantry, who attributed the epidemic to a conspiracy of tho upper 

 classes. On the 18th of August he wrote to a friend, " I and uiiiia 

 are still alive but in what times ! " Four days afterwards the cholera 

 carried him off. He died, fays the author of his life in the ' Ujabbkuri 

 lemeretek Tara,' from which much of our narrative its taken, " iu the 

 seventy-second year of his life and the fifty-sixth of his authorship." 



The fame of Kazinczy appears to be rather on the rise than the 

 ebb. " We are more in want of a Kazinczy now," says the Hungarian 

 writer already quoted, "than we were twenty years back." There 

 are two so-called collections of his works, but the first in nine volumes 

 published between 1814 aud 1816 contains little but translations; tho 

 second commenced in 1836, but still incomplete, having been appar- 

 ently stopped by the revolution, contains his letters published for the 

 first time after his death, and which now seem likely to preserve his 

 memory bettor than any of his moro elaborate writings. This col- 

 lection is edited by Schedel aud Bajza. One of his nephews, QAUOU 

 .I i : M-.itiKi. KA/INCZV (born in ISIS) took an active part iu the revo- 

 lution of 1848, but was fortunate enough to bo included iu the 

 amnesty after it, aud is now engaged at IVsth in historical researches. 

 He is the author of ' Malviua, a tale,' of some translations from 

 Oesian, and an active writer iu the periodicals. 



KEAN, EDMUND, was born about 1787, in London. His father, 

 Edmund Kean, seems to have been a stage-carpenter ; his moth, r was 

 Miss Ann Carey, an actress at minor theatres and with strolling 

 players aud in showmen's booths. Keau's father seems to have, 

 cared little about him, his mother neglected him, and when he wag 

 two years old Miss Tidswell, an actress at the large theatres, who 

 was acquainted with Miss Carey, took charge of him, and, probably 

 from this circumstance merely, was reported to have been his mother. 

 He was sent to one or two day-schools in London, but, as may easily 

 be supposed, got little literary instruction. His theatrical education 

 however commenced early : Miss Tidswell instructed him in her art, 

 and his mother, as soon as she found that he might be mode useful, 

 took him with her in her occasional occupation of selling flowers and 

 perfumery from door to door ; aud she afterwards took him with her 

 in her rambles with strolling players and showmen ; and Master Carey, 

 as he was then colled, was so clever, that once, when Miss Carey aud 

 her son were performing in lUchardsou's booth at Windsor, Master 

 Carey was required to give his recitations before George 111. at the 

 Castle, which he did to his Majesty's great delight, and was dismissed 

 with a handsome present. He continued his performances, sometime* 

 with his mother and sometimes alone, at small places of public amuse- 

 ment in London and the neighbourhood till about the age of sixteen, 

 when he left her entirely, and joiued a company of strollers iu 

 Scotland. 



From this time till 1814, when he made his first appearance at 

 Drury-Lanc Theatre, London, his life was a series of tho vicissitudes, 

 struggles, and privations incident to the profession of on actor iu 

 country theatres. Meanwhile he had, in July 1808, married Miss 

 Chambers, an actress iu the same company in which he had obtained 

 an engagement at Gloucester. At length the play-bills of Drury-Laue 

 announced ' The Merchant of Venice,' ' Shy lock by Mr. Koau from tho 

 Exeter Theatre.' There had been no previous puffing, and tho house 

 was thinly attended, but the applause was tumultuous ; he repeated 

 the character; the house was well filled, and his fame was thenceforth 

 established. On his first night It! It. were paid at the doors; on the 

 second, 324t ; afterwards the average was upwards of 5UU/. ; and lho 

 actor's fame, it is needless to add, was secured. His salary was at 

 once raised to 201. a week ; aud not long afterwards the committee 

 made him a present of 600J. ; he also received many valuable presents 

 from individuals. Drury-Laue Theatre wai saved from tho ruin which 



