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)

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and action in England precisely at the samu time at
which similar causes led to similar results in Bengal.
To compare small poets with great, our most popular
poets Kirtibas and Kasi Ram Das wrote precisely at
the times when Shakespeare and Milton wrote in Eng-
land respectively. And to complete the comparison, the
tumultuous revolution in feelings, thoughts and ideas
which shook England and the whole of Europe .--bout
the end of the eighteenth centm-y, was contemporaneous,
and not unaptly be compared, with the vastest

revolution that Bengal has ever undergone, viz., the con-
quest of the country by the English.

We now enter upon the first of our Epochs, viz., the
period of Lyrical Poetry^

>7

(, 1_.

CHAPTER II.

Jayadeva Goswami.

The earliest poet of Bengal, and the only one of
note who has written in Sansnrit, is Jayadeva Goswami.
It has now been ascertained with tolerable certainty that
he lived and wrote in the 12th century of the Christian
era, i. e., immediately before the conquest of Bengal by
the Muhammadans. We shall not enter into discus-
sions, but shall only mention the grounds on which this
conclusion is based.

(