Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tompa, Mihály

TOMPA, Mihály ( = MICHAEL) (1817-1868), one of the best and tenderest Hungarian lyric poets, was born in 1817 at Rima-Szombat, in the county of Gomor, of very humble parentage, his father being village bootmaker. He studied law and theology in Saros-Patak, and subse quently at Budapest; but, feeling little inclination for the first-mentioned career, after many vicissitudes he, at the age of thirty, accepted the post of Protestant minister in Beje, a small village in his native county, whence, in two years, he removed to Kelemer, and four years later to Hanva, in the county of Borsod, where he remained till his death in 1868.

At the age of four-and-twenty Tompa published his first poems in the Athenaeum, which soon procured for him a high reputation. His first volume, Nepregek es Nepmvnddk ("Folk-Legends and Folk-Tales"), in 1846, met with great success, and the same may be said of the first volume of his "Poems" in 1847. In 1848 he took part in the war of independence, acting as field chaplain to the volunteers of his county and seeing several battles; but the unfortunate close of that heroic struggle silenced his poetic vein for a considerable time, and, when in 1852 and 1853 he gave vent to his patriotic grief in some masterly allegories on the state of oppressed Hungary, he was twice arrested by the Austrian authori ties. After being released he published his Virdgregek ("Legends of Flowers"), a collection of poems of the highest order, showing great imagination and love of nature, and displaying the loftiest humanity and great meditative power. Soon after this he became oppressed with melancholy and abandoned this branch of poetry. Indeed from this time he produced comparatively little. He pub lished three volumes of sermons, "which," says his biographer, Charles Szasz, Protestant bishop of Budapest, "are among the best in Hungarian literature, and will favourably compare with those of Robertson, llonod, or Parker." His collected poetical works, in six volumes, were published at Budapest in 1870, and again, in four volumes, in 1885.