Sayfa 5 / 788

This verdict upon the great masterpiece of all Slavic poetry,

written a few years after its appearance, by Zygmunt Krasinski,

one of Mickiewicz's two great successors in the field of Polish

letters, has been confirmed by the judgment of posterity. For the

chapter on Pan Tadeusz by George Brandes, than whom there have

been few more competent judges of modern European literature, is

little more than an expansion of Krasinski's pithy sentences. The

cosmopolitan critic echoes the patriotic Pole when he writes: "In

Pan Tadeusz Poland possesses the only successful epic our century

has produced."(2)