38/48 For a soldier and equerry you seem to know a great deal of the history of your country. All I know is derived from Florentius of Buda, whom we call Budai Ferentz. He was Professor of Greek and Latin at the Reformed College of Debreczen, where I was educated; he wrote a work entitled "Magyar Polgari Lexicon," Lives of Great Hungarian Citizens. He was dead before I was born, but I found his book, when I was a child, in the solitary home of my father, which stood on the confines of a puszta, or wilderness, and that book I used to devour in winter nights when the winds were whistling around the house. Oh! how my blood used to glow at the descriptions of Magyar valour, and likewise of Turkish; for Florentius has always done justice to the Turk. |