KOLCSEY, FERENCZ or FRANCIS, an Hungarian poet, critic, and orator of the first eminence, was born at Sza-Demeter, in the county of Middle Szolook in Transylvania, on the 8th of August 1790. Ile was sent when five years old to the Calvinistic school at Dcbreczin, where he acquired an excellent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and made a translation of the first book of the Iliad' into Hungarian hexameters. Debreczin was the main seat of the opponents to the reform which Kazinczy [Kamm) was effecting in the Hungarian language, but so warm was the young student's admiration of the reformer that when in his fifteenth year he wrote him a letter as a disciple, which Kazinczy answered with high gratification at finding that something good would come out of Debreezia. A few years later Kiilesey attracted attention by some poems in the Transylvanian Museum,' and for some years study and poetry formed his principal occupation. In 1809, having adopted the profession of the law, ho became a notary to the Royal Table' at Pesth, and was soon known to the literary celebrities of the capital as one of the most distin guished friends and followers of Kazinczy : but he was never a lover of society, and there was a peculiar gloom and melancholy about him as a young man. A satirical poem and some sharp critiques which he inserted in 1817 in the Tudom4nyos Gylijtem8ny ' drew on him some odium, and for • time he withdrew from periodical writing; but at the persuasion of his friend Szemere he united with him in 1826 in the publication of • periodical of their own, under the title of :let is Literature' Life and Literature'). His critical essays in this publication are considered the best of the kind that Hungary has yet produced.
His reputation stood high, but was purely literary till 1829, when he began to attract attention by the share he took in county business at Szatmar, where he held the office of upper notary, and in 1832 he was sent to the llungarian diet as deputy of the county of Szatmar. In a short time his political reputation surpassed his literary, and he was for the remainder of his life the acknowledged first orator of Hungary, Kossuth not having then developed his extra ordinary talents. His success as an orator was the more remarkable that hie personal advantages were small, and he had in his youth lost the sight of one eye. The line he took was that of extreme liberalism, supported with conscientious sternness. When his constituents eent him instructions of an illiberal character with regard to the question of the redemption of the oppressive land-tax, he throw up his commission, but was afterwards persuaded to resume it. He was the most intimate friend of Baron Nicholas 1Vesselenyi, the leader of the opposition, and when in 1838 Wessenlenyi and Kosauth were thrown into prison by the court, he conducted Wesselenyits defence, which was a brilliant specimen of his talents, though it. failed of success. On the 24th of August 1838, only eight days after he had finished the defence, he suddenly died, and it is said in the 'Ujabbkori Ismeretek Tara,' of fifteen years later, that Hungary had not yet ceased to mourn him.
A collection of his works, Kiilesey Minden Munkai,' was published after his death in five volumes by Elitviis, Szalay, and Szemere, and an account of his life has appeared by his friend Kallay. His diary of the diet of 1832-36, was published at Pcsth during the year of revo lution 1848, and is a valuable document for Hungarian history. Of his works the first volume contains his poems, tho second his tales, the third his critical, the fourth his philosophical, and the fifth his miscellaneous writings. He is a pleasing poet, and a very pleasing and spirited prose-writer; his talcs, which originally appeared in some of the Hungarian annuals, being excellent specimens of a lucid and animated style.
KOLLAlt, JAN, a poet and preacher, the originator of the idea of Panslavism, was born on the 29th of July 1793, according to Jung- min:la's 'History of Bohemian Literature,' at Moschowza, in the county of Trentachin in Hungary, being by birth a Slovak, or one of the Slavonic race of northern Hungary, who speak a language akin to that of their neighbours the Bohemians. After studying at Preaburg and
Jena, he became in 1819 pastor of a Slovakian evangelical congregation at Pesth. In 1823 and 1827 he issued in two volumes, under the title of ' Narodnie Zpiewanky,' or National Songs,' an interesting collection of the popular poetry of the Slovaks, which reached a second edition, with additions, in 1834 and 1835. Unlike some other Slovakian authors however, be was far from exhibiting a narrow and exclusive attachment to his native dialect. Considering the Slovakian as too circumscribed in its range to be equal to the dignity of literary composition, he took for the language of his writings the Bohemian, though it was at the time rejected for German in Bohemia itself by several of the native authors. In 1821 he published at Prague a volume of Bohemian sonnets, under the title of "Diane' (` Poems ') ; and in 1824 at Buda a new edition, under the title of 'Slawy Deets' (' The Daughter of Glory '). The copy of the second edition, in the British Museum, formerly belonged to Bowring, to whom it was presented by Safarik, and who has written in it, "This is a very remarkable book, and how its true and fiery spirit should have burst this Austrian censorship is altogether unintelligible to J. B." The leading idea of the poems is that of the common bond of union between all the Slavonic nations, and the work was iu consequenco not looked upon with favour by the Hungarians, who were anxious to see their Magyar language extended over the whole of Hungary, and observed with apprehension that the Slavoniana to the north of the kingdom, and the Slavonians to the south, were beginning to become conscious of their relationship. Kollar proceeded more and more to develop his idea in his 'Slawa Bohynie' ('The Goddeas Slava or Glory'), a collection of philological and mythological essays, and in a work in German, on the connection between the Slavonic races and dialects, Lieber die literfirische Wechselseitigkeit zwischen den Stimmon and Mandarten der slawis chen Nation (Path, 1831). In this publication the wish for a general combination of the Slavonic races is more openly expressed than in any previous one. The same idea pervades the Cestopie (Perth, 1843), a record of • journey to Upper Italy, the Tyrol, and Bavaria, made by Kollar in 1841, chiefly for the purpose of discovering traces of Slavonic antiquity.
Among his other productions is a volume of sermons, 'Kano' (Perth, 101), which were found so eloquent that they were translated into several languages. Kollar was obliged to leave Peeth by the revolution of 1848, and must in the same year have seen nanny of his hopes destroyed by the breaking up of the Slavonia Congress at Prague by the cannon of Windischgriitz. In the next year be was, probably by way of compensation, named professor of 'mei:neology at the Uni versity of Vienna. In 1851 he made a journey to Mecklenburg, to study the remains of the Obotritea, and on his return to Vienna was surprised by death on the 29th of January 1852, when he was pre paring for the press a German work, slawische Altitalieo,' intended to prove that the ancient inhabitants of Italy spoke a Slavonic language.
The work of Kollar which is chiefly admired by his admirers is his `Slawy Dcera,' which in its latest shape, as it appears in his ' Dila Beurnickti ' (' Poetical Works ') published at Buda in 1845, is called a " lyrico-epic poem," in five cantos, and extends to 622 sonnets, having little connection except the common idea of 'Panslaviam ' which per vades them. Whatever the merit of some of the earlier portions, there can be no doubt that some of the later additions are scarcely calculated to awaken respect for the writer, in particular some coarse attacks on Mr. Paget and Miss Pardoe, apparently dictated by a feeling of resentment at their having spoken well of the Hungarians. The prose works of Kollar contain some valuable information, which is however disfigured by an occasional Outbreak of the same spirit of mere Slavonic nationality. Several of Kollar's sonnets are translated in Sir John Bowring's work on tho Bohemian poets.