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)

X INTRODUCTION. (

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Seldom has a poet's imagination created (anyt%lng
more exquisitely beautiful, more intensely poetical than
Sakuntala. The innocence of a saint, the simplicity of a
child, the purest and the tenderest feelings which can
ever animate the heart of a human being, the first
troubled impressions of love stealing inCo and1 glimmering
in a child-like and tender bosom as softly as moonbeams
glimmer in the ripples of a crystal lake,—these and a
thousand soft associations clinging around a retired her-
mitage and its amiable inmates, make the character of

1 a

Sakuntala exquisitely beautiful and poetical. Nowhore
can truer or deeper poetry be found than in the lines in
which Sakuntala takes a tender leave of the Madhavi
creeper, the female antejope, the little fawn and the
other companions ,pf her earlier and happier days. We
shall make a short extract from Sir W. Jones's transla-
tion.

" Sakuntala.—Father !' when yon female antelope
who now moves slowly from the weight of the young ones
with which she is pregnant shall be delivered of them,
send me, I beg, a kind message with tidings of her safe-
ty.—Do not forget.

Kanna.—My beloved, I will not forget it.

Sakuntala.—[Advancing, then stopping.] Ah ! what
is it that clings to the skirts of my robe and detains me ?
[She turns round and looks.] <

Kanna.—It is thy beloved child the little fawn, whose
n?,outh, when the sharp points of Kusa grass had wound-
ed it, has been so often smeared by thy hand with the
healing oil of Ingudi; who has been so often fed by thee