introduces more than once, he gives a description of himself which brings him and his misery pictorially before us. It may thus be rendered:
This was written in his chamber by the penniless Tinódi, Often blowing on his fingers, for the cold was in his body.[1]
Tinódi flourished in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was employed as a literatus in the suite of Valentine Török, who being led captive by the Turks to the seven towers, left his poor bard to wander over Hungary and Transylvania. His works were collected by himself into two small quarto volumes in 1554.
Balassa (born 1550, died 1594) has a few compositions of some energy and feeling, and one or two of his warlike songs are martial and fiery. He fell in the siege of Gran. How many of the poets of war have been its victims! His first introduction to notice was on occasion of the crowning of Rudolf at Pressburg in 1572, when he exhibited a grotesque peasant dance to the court, exciting, says his biographer, the wonder of the royal family and of all who saw him. His love for poetry is manifest from the pieces he wrote
- ↑ Ennek lö́n irása a' jó kolosvárba
Tinódi Sebestyén könyvnyomtatásába;
Szerzé nagy buába, egy hideg szobába,
Gyakran fú körmébe, mert nincs pénz tasolyába.
