a, and not his commonplace son Thaddeus, now became the real
hero of the poem.(5) Nor was this hero wholly a product of the writer's
invention. There has recently been discovered a petition by Mikolaj
Mickiewicz, the father of the poet, praying the authorities to grant him
protection from one Jan Soplica, "a man of criminal sort," who had slain
the uncle of the petitioner and was now threatening to kill the whole
Mickiewicz family and burn their house. With the character of this person
the description of Jacek Soplica's early years agrees as closely as his
name. Mickiewicz even mentions his own kindred as the ancestral enemies of
the Soplicas (page 45). Yet one of that hated family he now made the hero
of his greatest poem. By introducing him in the guise of Father Robak,
repentant and striving to atone for past misdeeds through heroic service
to his country, he infused into his poem a romantic charm. The mystery
surrounding this figure connects _Pan Tadeusz_, an epic that is truly
classic in its dignified elevation and restraint of feeling, with _Konrad
Wallenrod_, a romantic tale conceived in the spirit of Byronic passion.

In the work of Mickiewicz as a whole two characteristics predominate: a
great intensity of feeling, which sometimes sinks into sentimentality, and
at others rises into lyric fervour; and a wonderful truth, not only to the
general impressions of his experience, but to the actual concrete facts of
it, even to such trifles as the names of persons and places. Thus _The
Forefathers,_ despite all its fantastic elements, reproduces many
incidents in which the poet himself was concerned. Furthermore, in certain
works, as in his early tale _Grazyna_, Mickiewicz had shown a wonderful
ability suddenly to detach himself from passing currents of emotion and to
rise into regions of Olympian calm, giving to his work a classic, rounded
completeness worthy of Grecian art. All these aspects of his genius are
present in _Pan Tadeusz_. Echoes of the poet's personal emotion are heard
in Jacek's tale of his passion for Eva; and an ardent love of country
permeates the poem and breaks out again and again with lyric force. On the
other hand the book is faithful to reality in its picture of Lithuanian
manners and customs; the great romantic poet is at the same time the first
realistic novelist of Poland. Minor details beyond number are introduced
from the writer's personal recollections; "even the Jew's playing of the
dulcime