Dutt, Romesh Chunder: The literature of Bengal: being an attempt to trace the progress of the national mind in its various aspects, as reflected in the nation’s literature from the earliest times to the present day ; with copious extracts from the best writers (Calcutta, 1877)

B INTRODUCTION. IX

impress cyi literature. In a word, we shall endeavour to
show our readers how our forefathers act^d and
thought, what they felt and what they believed, how
they loved and how they lived. The literature of our
country 'bears the true impress of the national mind,
through its successive changes, and is the only index to
the condftiSn of the millions of Bengal during several
hundreds of years.

Before we enter into any discussion regarding the
comparative merits of our poets we would fain have
some definite standard by which to judge.

Poetry may be defined a piece of metrical composi-
tion, raising an image or a string of ideas, and awaken-
ing our finer sensibilities. We shall try to illustrate what
we mean. ( \

"We all know, though it is scarcely possible to denne,
what our nicer sensibilities, our finer emotions are. To
take an instance, the emotion of laughter is not one of
the nicer sensibilities, and a piece of composition, cal-
culated to move laughter, comes in more properly
within the province of a comic journal than of poe-
try accurately so called. On the other hand, veneration,
for the mighty and the sublime, sorrow and sympathy for
the lowly and, the suffering, love for the innocent and the
beautiful,—these, and such as these, are pre-eminently
the finer sensibilities of our heart, and that which excites
these feelings is genuine poetry. , ,

We shall try to illustrate our remarks with a few ex-
tracts, but the storehouse of poetry is so vast, so varieC,
so rich, that the task of selection even at random is ex-
ceedingly difficult.
)