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Still more important than the praises of the finest literary

critics is the enthusiastic affection cherished for Pan Tadeasz

by the great body of the Polish people. Perhaps no poem of any

other European nation is so truly national and in the best sense

of the word popular. Almost every Pole who has read anything more

than the newspaper is familiar with the contents of Pan Tadeusz.

No play of Shakespeare, no long poem of Milton or Wordsworth or

Tennyson, is so well known or so well beloved by the English

people as is Pan Tadeusz by the Poles. To find a work equally

well known one might turn to Defoe's prosaic tale of adventure,

_Robinson Crusoe_; to find a work so beloved would be hardly

possible.