Chapter 19

years have passed in happy love, and Pururavas has only one sorrow--that he is childless.

One day a vulture snatches from a maid's hand the treasured gem of reunion, which he takes to be a bit of bloody meat, and flies off with it, escaping before he can be killed. While the king and his companions lament the gem's loss, the chamberlain enters, bringing the gem and an arrow with which the bird had been shot. On the arrow is written a verse declaring it to be the property of Ayus, son of Pururavas and Urvashi. A hermit-woman is then ushered in, who brings a lad with her. She explains that the lad had been entrusted to her as soon as born by Urvashi, and that it was he who had just shot the bird and recovered the gem. When Urvashi is summoned to explain why she had concealed her child, she reminds the king of heaven's decree that she should return as soon as Pururavas should see the child to be born to them. She had therefore sacrificed maternal love to conjugal affection. Upon this, the king's new-found joy gives way to gloom. He determines to give up his kingdom and spend the remainder of his life as a hermit in the forest. But the situation is saved by a messenger from Paradise, bearing heaven's decree that Urvashi shall live with the king until his death. A troop of nymphs then enter and assist in the solemn consecration of Ayus as crown prince.

The tale of Pururavas and Urvashi, which Kalidasa has treated dramatically, is first made known to us in the Rigveda. It is thus one of the few tales that so caught the Hindu imagination as to survive the profound change which came over Indian thinking in the passage from Vedic to classical times. As might be expected from its history, it is told in many widely differing forms, of which the oldest and best may be summarised thus.

Pururavas, a mortal, sees and loves the nymph Urvashi. She consents to live with him on earth so long as he shall not break certain trivial conditions. Some time after the birth of a son, these conditions are broken, through no fault of the man, and she leaves him. He wanders disconsolate, finds her, and pleads with her, by her duty as a wife, by her love for her child, even by a threat of suicide. She rejects his entreaties, declaring that there can be no lasting love between mortal and immortal, even adding: "There are no friendships with women. Their hearts are the hearts of hyenas." Though at last she comforts him with vague hopes of a future happiness, the story remains, as indeed it must remain, a tragedy--the tragedy of love between human and divine.

This splendid tragic story Kalidasa has ruined. He has made of it an ordinary tale of domestic intrigue, has changed the nymph of heaven into a member of an earthly harem. The more important changes made by Kalidasa in the traditional story, all have the tendency to remove the massive, godlike, austere features of the tale, and to substitute something graceful or even pretty. These principal changes are: the introduction of the queen, the clown, and the whole human paraphernalia of a court; the curse pronounced on Urvashi for her carelessness in the heavenly drama, and its modification; the invention of the gem of reunion; and the final removal of the curse, even as modified. It is true that the Indian theatre permits no tragedy, and we may well believe that no successor of Kalidasa could hope to present a tragedy on the stage. But might not Kalidasa, far overtopping his predecessors, have put on the stage a drama the story of which was already familiar to his audience as a tragic story? Perhaps not. If not, one can but wish that he had chosen another subject.

This violent twisting of an essentially tragic story has had a further ill consequence in weakening the individual characters. Pururavas is a mere conventional hero, in no way different from fifty others, in spite of his divine lineage and his successful wooing of a goddess. Urvashi is too much of a nymph to be a woman, and too much of a woman to be a nymph. The other characters are mere types.

Yet, in spite of these obvious objections, Hindu critical opinion has always rated the _Urvashi_ very high, and I have long hesitated to make adverse comments upon it, for it is surely true that every nation is the best judge of its own literature. And indeed, if one could but forget plot and characters, he would find in _Urvashi_ much to attract and charm. There is no lack of humour in the clever maid who worms the clown's secret out of him. There is no lack of a certain shrewdness in the clown, as when he observes:

"Who wants heaven? It is nothing to eat or drink. It is just a place where they never shut their eyes--like fishes!"

Again, the play offers an opportunity for charming scenic display. The terrified nymphs gathered on the mountain, the palace balcony bathed in moonlight, the forest through which the king wanders in search of his lost darling, the concluding solemn consecration of the crown prince by heavenly beings--these scenes show that Kalidasa was no closet dramatist. And finally, there is here and there such poetry as only Kalidasa could write. The fourth act particularly, undramatic as it is, is full of a delicate beauty that defies transcription. It was a new and daring thought--to present on the stage a long lyrical monologue addressed to the creatures of the forest and inspired by despairing passion. Nor must it be forgotten that this play, like all Indian plays, is an opera. The music and the dancing are lost. We judge it perforce unfairly, for we judge it by the text alone. If, in spite of all, the _Urvashi_ is a failure, it is a failure possible only to a serene and mighty poet.

* * * * *

THE DYNASTY OF RAGHU

_The Dynasty of Raghu_ is an epic poem in nineteen cantos. It consists of 1564 stanzas, or something over six thousand lines of verse. The subject is that great line of kings who traced their origin to the sun, the famous "solar line" of Indian story. The bright particular star of the solar line is Rama, the knight without fear and without reproach, the Indian ideal of a gentleman. His story had been told long before Kalidasa's time in the _Ramayana_, an epic which does not need to shun comparison with the foremost epic poems of Europe. In _The Dynasty of Raghu_, too, Rama is the central figure; yet in Kalidasa's poem there is much detail concerning other princes of the line. The poem thus naturally falls into three great parts: first, the four immediate ancestors of Rama (cantos 1-9); second, Rama (cantos 10-15); third, certain descendants of Rama (cantos 16-19). A somewhat detailed account of the matter of the poem may well precede criticism and comment.

_First canto. The journey to the hermitage_.--The poem begins with the customary brief prayer for Shiva's favour:

God Shiva and his mountain bride, Like word and meaning unified, The world's great parents, I beseech To join fit meaning to my speech.

Then follow nine stanzas in which Kalidasa speaks more directly of himself than elsewhere in his works:

How great is Raghu's solar line! How feebly small are powers of mine! As if upon the ocean's swell I launched a puny cockle-shell.

The fool who seeks a poet's fame Must look for ridicule and blame, Like tiptoe dwarf who fain would try To pluck the fruit for giants high.

Yet I may enter through the door That mightier poets pierced of yore; A thread may pierce a jewel, but Must follow where the diamond cut.

Of kings who lived as saints from birth, Who ruled to ocean-shore on earth, Who toiled until success was given, Whose chariots stormed the gates of heaven,

Whose pious offerings were blest, Who gave his wish to every guest, Whose punishments were as the crimes, Who woke to guard the world betimes,

Who sought, that they might lavish, pelf, Whose measured speech was truth itself, Who fought victorious wars for fame, Who loved in wives the mother's name,

Who studied all good arts as boys, Who loved, in manhood, manhood's joys, Whose age was free from worldly care, Who breathed their lives away in prayer,

Of these I sing, of Raghu's line, Though weak mine art, and wisdom mine. Forgive these idle stammerings And think: For virtue's sake he sings.

The good who hear me will be glad To pluck the good from out the bad; When ore is proved by fire, the loss Is not of purest gold, but dross.

After the briefest glance at the origin of the solar line, the poet tells of Rama's great-great-grandfather, King Dilipa. The detailed description of Dilipa's virtues has interest as showing Kalidasa's ideal of an aristocrat; a brief sample must suffice here:

He practised virtue, though in health; Won riches, with no greed for wealth; Guarded his life, though not from fear; Prized joys of earth, but not too dear.

His virtuous foes he could esteem Like bitter drugs that healing seem; The friends who sinned he could forsake Like fingers bitten by a snake.

Yet King Dilipa has one deep-seated grief: he has no son. He therefore journeys with his queen to the hermitage of the sage Vasishtha, in order to learn what they must do to propitiate an offended fate. Their chariot rolls over country roads past fragrant lotus-ponds and screaming peacocks and trustful deer, under archways formed without supporting pillars by the cranes, through villages where they receive the blessings of the people. At sunset they reach the peaceful forest hermitage, and are welcomed by the sage. In response to Vasishtha's benevolent inquiries, the king declares that all goes well in the kingdom, and yet:

Until from this dear wife there springs A son as great as former kings, The seven islands of the earth And all their gems, are nothing worth.

The final debt, most holy one, Which still I owe to life--a son-- Galls me as galls the cutting chain An elephant housed in dirt and pain.

Vasishtha tells the king that on a former occasion he had offended the divine cow Fragrant, and had been cursed by the cow to lack children until he had propitiated her own offspring. While the sage is speaking, Fragrant's daughter approaches, and is entrusted to the care of the king and queen.

_Second canto. The holy cow's gift_.--During twenty-one days the king accompanies the cow during her wanderings in the forest, and each night the queen welcomes their return to the hermitage. On the twenty-second day the cow is attacked by a lion, and when the king hastens to draw an arrow, his arm is magically numbed, so that he stands helpless. To increase his horror, the lion speaks with a human voice, saying that he is a servant of the god Shiva, set on guard there and eating as his appointed food any animals that may appear. Dilipa perceives that a struggle with earthly weapons is useless, and begs the lion to accept his own body as the price of the cow's release. The lion tries sophistry, using the old, hollow arguments:

Great beauty and fresh youth are yours; on earth As sole, unrivalled emperor you rule; Should you redeem a thing of little worth At such a price, you would appear a fool.

If pity moves you, think that one mere cow Would be the gainer, should you choose to die; Live rather for the world! Remember how The father-king can bid all dangers fly.

And if the fiery sage's wrath, aglow At loss of one sole cow, should make you shudder, Appease his anger; for you can bestow Cows by the million, each with pot-like udder.

Save life and youth; for to the dead are given No long, unbroken years of joyous mirth; But riches and imperial power are heaven-- The gods have nothing that you lack on earth.

The lion spoke and ceased; but echo rolled Forth from the caves wherein the sound was pent, As if the hills applauded manifold, Repeating once again the argument.

Dilipa has no trouble in piercing this sophistical argument, and again offers his own life, begging the lion to spare the body of his fame rather than the body of his flesh. The lion consents, but when the king resolutely presents himself to be eaten, the illusion vanishes, and the holy cow grants the king his desire. The king returns to his capital with the queen, who shortly becomes pregnant.

_Third canto. Raghu's consecration_.--The queen gives birth to a glorious boy, whom the joyful father names Raghu. There follows a description of the happy family, of which a few stanzas are given here:

The king drank pleasure from him late and soon With eyes that stared like windless lotus-flowers; Unselfish joy expanded all his powers As swells the sea responsive to the moon.

The rooted love that filled each parent's soul For the other, deep as bird's love for the mate, Was now divided with the boy; and straight The remaining half proved greater than the whole.

He learned the reverence that befits a boy; Following the nurse's words, began to talk; And clinging to her finger, learned to walk: These childish lessons stretched his father's joy,

Who clasped the baby to his breast, and thrilled To feel the nectar-touch upon his skin, Half closed his eyes, the father's bliss to win Which, more for long delay, his being filled.

The baby hair must needs be clipped; yet he Retained two dangling locks, his cheeks to fret; And down the river of the alphabet He swam, with other boys, to learning's sea.

Religion's rites, and what good learning suits A prince, he had from teachers old and wise; Not theirs the pain of barren enterprise, For effort spent on good material, fruits.

This happy childhood is followed by a youth equally happy. Raghu is married and made crown prince. He is entrusted with the care of the horse of sacrifice,[1] and when Indra, king of the gods, steals the horse, Raghu fights him. He cannot overcome the king of heaven, yet he acquits himself so creditably that he wins Indra's friendship. In consequence of this proof of his manhood, the empire is bestowed upon Raghu by his father, who retires with his queen to the forest, to spend his last days and prepare for death.

_Fourth canto. Raghu conquers the world_.--The canto opens with several stanzas descriptive of the glory of youthful King Raghu.

He manifested royal worth By even justice toward the earth, Beloved as is the southern breeze, Too cool to burn, too warm to freeze.

The people loved his father, yet For greater virtues could forget; The beauty of the blossoms fair Is lost when mango-fruits are there.

But the vassal kings are restless

For when they knew the king was gone And power was wielded by his son, The wrath of subject kings awoke, Which had been damped in sullen smoke.

Raghu therefore determines to make a warlike progress through all India. He marches eastward with his army from his capital Ayodhya (the name is preserved in the modern Oudh) to the Bay of Bengal, then south along the eastern shore of India to Cape Comorin, then north along the western shore until he comes to the region drained by the Indus, finally east through the tremendous Himalaya range into Assam, and thence home. The various nations whom he encounters, Hindus, Persians, Greeks, and White Huns, all submit either with or without fighting. On his safe return, Raghu offers a great sacrifice and gives away all his wealth.[2]

_Fifth canto. Aja goes wooing_.--While King Raghu is penniless, a young sage comes to him, desiring a huge sum of money to give to the teacher with whom he has just finished his education. The king, unwilling that any suppliant should go away unsatisfied, prepares to assail the god of wealth in his Himalayan stronghold, and the god, rather than risk the combat, sends a rain of gold into the king's treasury. This gold King Raghu bestows upon the sage, who gratefully uses his spiritual power to cause a son to be born to his benefactor. In course of time, the son is born and the name Aja is given to him. We are here introduced to Prince Aja, who is a kind of secondary hero in the poem, inferior only to his mighty grandson, Rama. To Aja are devoted the remainder of this fifth canto and the following three cantos; and these Aja-cantos are among the loveliest in the epic. When the prince has grown into young manhood, he journeys to a neighbouring court to participate in the marriage reception of Princess Indumati.[3]

One evening he camps by a river, from which a wild elephant issues and attacks his party. When wounded by Aja, the elephant strangely changes his form, becoming a demigod, gives the prince a magic weapon, and departs to heaven. Aja proceeds without further adventure to the country and the palace of Princess Indumati, where he is made welcome and luxuriously lodged for the night. In the morning, he is awakened by the song of the court poets outside his chamber. He rises and betakes himself to the hall where the suitors are gathering.

_Sixth canto. The princess chooses_.--The princely suitors assemble in the hall; then, to the sound of music, the princess enters in a litter, robed as a bride, and creates a profound sensation.

For when they saw God's masterpiece, the maid Who smote their eyes to other objects blind, Their glances, wishes, hearts, in homage paid, Flew forth to her; mere flesh remained behind.

The princes could not but betray their yearning By sending messengers, their love to bring, In many a quick, involuntary turning, As flowering twigs of trees announce the spring.

Then a maid-servant conducts the princess from one suitor to another, and explains the claim which each has upon her affection. First is presented the King of Magadha, recommended in four stanzas, one of which runs:

Though other kings by thousands numbered be, He seems the one, sole governor of earth; Stars, constellations, planets, fade and flee When to the moon the night has given birth.

But the princess is not attracted.

The slender maiden glanced at him; she glanced And uttered not a word, nor heeded how The grass-twined blossoms of her garland danced When she dismissed him with a formal bow.

They pass to the next candidate, the king of the Anga country, in whose behalf this, and more, is said:

Learning and wealth by nature are at strife, Yet dwell at peace in him; and for the two You would be fit companion as his wife, Like wealth enticing, and like learning true.

Him too the princess rejects, "not that he was unworthy of love, or she lacking in discernment, but tastes differ." She is then conducted to the King of Avanti:

And if this youthful prince your fancy pleases, Bewitching maiden, you and he may play In those unmeasured gardens that the breezes From Sipra's billows ruffle, cool with spray.

The inducement is insufficient, and a new candidate is presented, the King of Anupa,

A prince whose fathers' glories cannot fade, By whom the love of learned men is wooed, Who proves that Fortune is no fickle jade When he she chooses is not fickly good.

But alas!

She saw that he was brave to look upon, Yet could not feel his love would make her gay; Full moons of autumn nights, when clouds are gone, Tempt not the lotus-flowers that bloom by day.

The King of Shurasena has no better fortune, in spite of his virtues and his wealth. As a river hurrying to the sea passes by a mountain that would detain her, so the princess passes him by. She is next introduced to the king of the Kalinga country;

His palace overlooks the ocean dark With windows gazing on the unresting deep, Whose gentle thunders drown the drums that mark The hours of night, and wake him from his sleep.

But the maiden can no more feel at home with him than the goddess of fortune can with a good but unlucky man. She therefore turns her attention to the king of the Pandya country in far southern India. But she is unmoved by hearing of the magic charm of the south, and rejects him too.

And every prince rejected while she sought A husband, darkly frowned, as turrets, bright One moment with the flame from torches caught, Frown gloomily again and sink in night.

The princess then approaches Aja, who trembles lest she pass him by, as she has passed by the other suitors. The maid who accompanies Indumati sees that Aja awakens a deeper feeling, and she therefore gives a longer account of his kingly line, ending with the recommendation:

High lineage is his, fresh beauty, youth, And virtue shaped in kingly breeding's mould; Choose him, for he is worth your love; in truth, A gem is ever fitly set in gold.

The princess looks lovingly at the handsome youth, but cannot speak for modesty. She is made to understand her own feelings when the maid invites her to pass on to the next candidate. Then the wreath is placed round Aja's neck, the people of the city shout their approval, and the disappointed suitors feel like night-blooming lotuses at daybreak.

_Seventh canto. Aja's marriage_.--While the suitors retire to the camps where they have left their retainers, Aja conducts Indumati into the decorated and festive city. The windows are filled with the faces of eager and excited women, who admire the beauty of the young prince and the wisdom of the princess's choice. When the marriage ceremony has been happily celebrated, the disappointed suitors say farewell with pleasant faces and jealous hearts, like peaceful pools concealing crocodiles. They lie in ambush on the road which he must take, and when he passes with his young bride, they fall upon him. Aja provides for the safety of Indumati, marshals his attendants, and greatly distinguishes himself in the battle which follows. Finally he uses the magic weapon, given him by the demigod, to benumb his adversaries, and leaving them in this helpless condition, returns home. He and his young bride are joyfully welcomed by King Raghu, who resigns the kingdom in favour of Aja.

_Eighth canto. Aja's lament_.--As soon as King Aja is firmly established on his throne, Raghu retires to a hermitage to prepare for the death of his mortal part. After some years of religious meditation he is released, attaining union with the eternal spirit which is beyond all darkness. His obsequies are performed by his dutiful son. Indumati gives birth to a splendid boy, who is named Dasharatha. One day, as the queen is playing with her husband in the garden, a wreath of magic flowers falls upon her from heaven, and she dies. The stricken king clasps the body of his dead beloved, and laments over her.

If flowers that hardly touch the body, slay it, The simplest instruments of fate may bring Destruction, and we have no power to stay it; Then must we live in fear of everything?

No! Death was right. He spared the sterner anguish; Through gentle flowers your gentle life was lost As I have seen the lotus fade and languish When smitten by the slow and silent frost.

Yet God is hard. With unforgiving rigour He forged a bolt to crush this heart of mine; He left the sturdy tree its living vigour, But stripped away and slew the clinging vine.

Through all the years, dear, you would not reprove me, Though I offended. Can you go away Sudden, without a word? I know you love me, And I have not offended you to-day.

You surely thought me faithless, to be banished As light-of-love and gambler, from your life, Because without a farewell word, you vanished And never will return, sweet-smiling wife.

The warmth and blush that followed after kisses Is still upon her face, to madden me; For life is gone, 'tis only life she misses. A curse upon such life's uncertainty!

I never wronged you with a thought unspoken, Still less with actions. Whither are you flown? Though king in name, I am a man heartbroken, For power and love took root in you alone.

Your bee-black hair from which the flowers are peeping, Dear, wavy hair that I have loved so well, Stirs in the wind until I think you sleeping, Soon to return and make my glad heart swell.

Awake, my love! Let only life be given, And choking griefs that stifle now, will flee As darkness from the mountain-cave is driven By magic herbs that glitter brilliantly.

The silent face, round which the curls are keeping Their scattered watch, is sad to look upon As in the night some lonely lily, sleeping When musically humming bees are gone.

The girdle that from girlhood has befriended You, in love-secrets wise, discreet, and true, No longer tinkles, now your dance is ended, Faithful in life, in dying faithful too.

Your low, sweet voice to nightingales was given; Your idly graceful movement to the swans; Your grace to fluttering vines, dear wife in heaven; Your trustful, wide-eyed glances to the fawns:

You left your charms on earth, that I, reminded By them, might be consoled though you depart; But vainly! Far from you, by sorrow blinded, I find no prop of comfort for my heart.

Remember how you planned to make a wedding, Giving the vine-bride to her mango-tree; Before that happy day, dear, you are treading The path with no return. It should not be.

And this ashoka-tree that you have tended With eager longing for the blossoms red-- How can I twine the flowers that should have blended With living curls, in garlands for the dead?

The tree remembers how the anklets, tinkling On graceful feet, delighted other years; Sad now he droops, your form with sorrow sprinkling, And sheds his blossoms in a rain of tears.

Joy's sun is down, all love is fallen and perished, The song of life is sung, the spring is dead, Gone is the use of gems that once you cherished, And empty, ever empty, is my bed.

You were my comrade gay, my home, my treasure, You were my bosom's friend, in all things true, My best-loved pupil in the arts of pleasure: Stern death took all I had in taking you.

Still am I king, and rich in kingly fashion, Yet lacking you, am poor the long years through; I cannot now be won to any passion, For all my passions centred, dear, in you.

Aja commits the body of his beloved queen to the flames. A holy hermit comes to tell the king that his wife had been a nymph of heaven in a former existence, and that she has now returned to her home. But Aja cannot be comforted. He lives eight weary years for the sake of his young son, then is reunited with his queen in Paradise.

_Ninth canto. The hunt_.--This canto introduces us to King Dasharatha, father of the heroic Rama. It begins with an elaborate description of his glory, justice, prowess, and piety; then tells of the three princesses who became his wives: Kausalya, Kaikeyi, and Sumitra. In the beautiful springtime he takes an extended hunting-trip in the forest, during which an accident happens, big with fate.

He left his soldiers far behind one day In the wood, and following where deer-tracks lay, Came with his weary horse adrip with foam To river-banks where hermits made their home.

And in the stream he heard the water fill A jar; he heard it ripple clear and shrill, And shot an arrow, thinking he had found A trumpeting elephant, toward the gurgling sound.

Such actions are forbidden to a king, Yet Dasharatha sinned and did this thing; For even the wise and learned man is minded To go astray, by selfish passion blinded.

He heard the startling cry, "My father!" rise Among the reeds; rode up; before his eyes He saw the jar, the wounded hermit boy: Remorse transfixed his heart and killed his joy.

He left his horse, this monarch famous far, Asked him who drooped upon the water-jar His name, and from the stumbling accents knew A hermit youth, of lowly birth but true.

The arrow still undrawn, the monarch bore Him to his parents who, afflicted sore With blindness, could not see their only son Dying, and told them what his hand had done.

The murderer then obeyed their sad behest And drew the fixèd arrow from his breast; The boy lay dead; the father cursed the king, With tear-stained hands, to equal suffering.

"In sorrow for your son you too shall die, An old, old man," he said, "as sad as I." Poor, trodden snake! He used his venomous sting, Then heard the answer of the guilty king:

"Your curse is half a blessing if I see The longed-for son who shall be born to me: The scorching fire that sweeps the well-ploughed field, May burn indeed, but stimulates the yield.

The deed is done; what kindly act can I Perform who, pitiless, deserve to die?" "Bring wood," he begged, "and build a funeral pyre, That we may seek our son through death by fire."

The king fulfilled their wish; and while they burned, In mute, sin-stricken sorrow he returned, Hiding death's seed within him, as the sea Hides magic fire that burns eternally.

Thus is foreshadowed in the birth of Rama, his banishment, and the death of his father.

Cantos ten to fifteen form the kernel of the epic, for they tell the story of Rama, the mighty hero of Raghu's line. In these cantos Kalidasa attempts to present anew, with all the literary devices of a more sophisticated age, the famous old epic story sung in masterly fashion by the author of the _Ramayana_. As the poet is treading ground familiar to all who hear him, the action of these cantos is very compressed.

_Tenth canto. The incarnation of Rama_.--While Dasharatha, desiring a son, is childless, the gods, oppressed by a giant adversary, betake themselves to Vishnu, seeking aid. They sing a hymn of praise, a part of which is given here.

O thou who didst create this All, Who dost preserve it, lest it fall, Who wilt destroy it and its ways-- To thee, O triune Lord, be praise.

As into heaven's water run The tastes of earth--yet it is one, So thou art all the things that range The universe, yet dost not change.

Far, far removed, yet ever near; Untouched by passion, yet austere; Sinless, yet pitiful of heart; Ancient, yet free from age--Thou art.

Though uncreate, thou seekest birth; Dreaming, thou watchest heaven and earth; Passionless, smitest low thy foes; Who knows thy nature, Lord? Who knows?

Though many different paths, O Lord, May lead us to some great reward, They gather and are merged in thee Like floods of Ganges in the sea.

The saints who give thee every thought, Whose every act for thee is wrought, Yearn for thine everlasting peace, For bliss with thee, that cannot cease.

Like pearls that grow in ocean's night, Like sunbeams radiantly bright, Thy strange and wonder-working ways Defeat extravagance of praise.

If songs that to thy glory tend Should weary grow or take an end, Our impotence must bear the blame, And not thine unexhausted name.

Vishnu is gratified by the praise of the gods, and asks their desire. They inform him that they are distressed by Ravana, the giant king of Lanka (Ceylon), whom they cannot conquer. Vishnu promises to aid them by descending to earth in a new avatar, as son of Dasharatha. Shortly afterwards, an angel appears before King Dasharatha, bringing in a golden bowl a substance which contains the essence of Vishnu. The king gives it to his three wives, who thereupon conceive and dream wonderful dreams. Then Queen Kausalya gives birth to Rama; Queen Kaikeyi to Bharata; Queen Sumitra to twins, Lakshmana and Shatrughna. Heaven and earth rejoice. The four princes grow up in mutual friendship, yet Rama and Lakshmana are peculiarly drawn to each other, as are Bharata and Shatrughna. So beautiful and so modest are the four boys that they seem like incarnations of the four things worth living for--virtue, money, love, and salvation.

_Eleventh canto. The victory over Rama-with-the-axe_.--At the request of the holy hermit Vishvamitra, the two youths Rama and Lakshmana visit his hermitage, to protect it from evil spirits. The two lads little suspect, on their maiden journey, how much of their lives will be spent in wandering together in the forest. On the way they are attacked by a giantess, whom Rama kills; the first of many giants who are to fall at his hand. He is given magic weapons by the hermit, with which he and his brother kill other giants, freeing the hermitage from all annoyance. The two brothers then travel with the hermit to the city of Mithila, attracted thither by hearing of its king, his wonderful daughter, and his wonderful bow. The bow was given him by the god Shiva; no man has been able to bend it; and the beautiful princess's hand is the prize of any man who can perform the feat. On the way thither, Rama brings to life Ahalya, a woman who in a former age had been changed to stone for unfaithfulness to her austere husband, and had been condemned to remain a stone until trodden by Rama's foot. Without further adventure, they reach Mithila, where the hermit presents Rama as a candidate for the bending of the bow.

The king beheld the boy, with beauty blest And famous lineage; he sadly thought How hard it was to bend the bow, distressed Because his child must be so dearly bought.

He said: "O holy one, a mighty deed That full-grown elephants with greatest pain Could hardly be successful in, we need Not ask of elephant-cubs. It would be vain.

For many splendid kings of valorous name, Bearing the scars of many a hard-fought day, Have tried and failed; then, covered with their shame, Have shrugged their shoulders, cursed, and strode away."

Yet when the bow is given to the youthful Rama, he not only bends, but breaks it. He is immediately rewarded with the hand of the Princess Sita, while Lakshmana marries her sister. On their journey home with their young brides, dreadful portents appear, followed by their cause, a strange being called Rama-with-the-axe, who is carefully to be distinguished from Prince Rama. This Rama-with-the-axe is a Brahman who has sworn to exterminate the entire warrior caste, and who naturally attacks the valorous prince. He makes light of Rama's achievement in breaking Shiva's bow, and challenges him to bend the mightier bow which he carries. This the prince succeeds in doing, and Rama-with-the-axe disappears, shamed and defeated. The marriage party then continues its journey to Ayodhya.

_Twelfth canto. The killing of Ravana_.--King Dasharatha prepares to anoint Rama crown prince, when Queen Kaikeyi interposes. On an earlier occasion she had rendered the king a service and received his promise that he would grant her two boons, whatever she desired. She now demands her two boons: the banishment of Rama for fourteen years, and the anointing of her own son Bharata as crown prince. Rama thereupon sets out for the Dandaka forest in Southern India, accompanied by his faithful wife Sita and his devoted brother Lakshmana. The stricken father dies of grief, thus fulfilling the hermit's curse. Now Prince Bharata proves himself more generous than his mother; he refuses the kingdom, and is with great difficulty persuaded by Rama himself to act as regent during the fourteen years. Even so, he refuses to enter the capital city, dwelling in a village outside the walls, and preserving Rama's slippers as a symbol of the rightful king. Meanwhile Rama's little party penetrates the wild forests of the south, fighting as need arises with the giants there. Unfortunately, a giantess falls in love with Rama, and

In Sita's very presence told Her birth--love made her overbold: For mighty passion, as a rule, Will change a woman to a fool.

Scorned by Rama, laughed at by Sita, she becomes furious and threatening.

Laugh on! Your laughter's fruit shall be Commended to you. Gaze on me! I am a tigress, you shall know, Insulted by a feeble doe.

Lakshmana thereupon cuts off her nose and ears, rendering her redundantly hideous. She departs, to return presently at the head of an army of giants, whom Rama defeats single-handed, while his brother guards Sita. The giantess then betakes herself to her brother, the terrible ten-headed Ravana, king of Ceylon. He succeeds in capturing Sita by a trick, and carries her off to his fortress in Ceylon. It is plainly necessary for Rama to seek allies before attempting to cross the straits and attack the stronghold. He therefore renders an important service to the monkey king Sugriva, who gratefully leads an army of monkeys to his assistance. The most valiant of these, Hanumat, succeeds in entering Ravana's capital, where he finds Sita, gives her a token from Rama, and receives a token for Rama. The army thereupon sets out and comes to the seashore, where it is reinforced by the giant Vibhishana, who has deserted his wicked brother Ravana. The monkeys hurl great boulders into the strait, thus forming a bridge over which they cross into Ceylon and besiege Ravana's capital. There ensue many battles between the giants and the monkeys, culminating in a tremendous duel between the champions, Rama and Ravana. In this duel Ravana is finally slain. Rama recovers his wife, and the principal personages of the army enter the flying chariot which had belonged to Ravana, to return to Ayodhya; for the fourteen years of exile are now over.

_Thirteenth canto. The return from the forest_.--This canto describes the long journey through the air from Ceylon over the whole length of India to Ayodhya. As the celestial car makes its journey, Rama points out the objects of interest or of memory to Sita. Thus, as they fly over the sea:

The form of ocean, infinitely changing, Clasping the world and all its gorgeous state, Unfathomed by the intellect's wide ranging, Is awful like the form of God, and great.

He gives his billowy lips to many a river That into his embrace with passion slips, Lover of many wives, a generous giver Of kisses, yet demanding eager lips.

Look back, my darling, with your fawn-like glances Upon the path that from your prison leads; See how the sight of land again entrances, How fair the forest, as the sea recedes.

Then, as they pass over the spot where Rama searched for his stolen wife:

There is the spot where, sorrowfully searching, I found an anklet on the ground one day; It could not tinkle, for it was not perching On your dear foot, but sad and silent lay.

I learned where you were carried by the giant From vines that showed themselves compassionate; They could not utter words, yet with their pliant Branches they pointed where you passed of late.

The deer were kind; for while the juicy grasses Fell quite unheeded from each careless mouth, They turned wide eyes that said, "'Tis there she passes The hours as weary captive" toward the south.

There is the mountain where the peacocks' screaming, And branches smitten fragrant by the rain, And madder-flowers that woke at last from dreaming, Made unendurable my lonely pain;

And mountain-caves where I could scarce dissemble The woe I felt when thunder crashed anew, For I remembered how you used to tremble At thunder, seeking arms that longed for you.

Rama then points out the spots in Southern India where he and Sita had dwelt in exile, and the pious hermitages which they had visited; later, the holy spot where the Jumna River joins the Ganges; finally, their distant home, unseen for fourteen years, and the well-known river, from which spray-laden breezes come to them like cool, welcoming hands. When they draw near, Prince Bharata comes forth to welcome them, and the happy procession approaches the capital city.

_Fourteenth canto. Sita is put away_.--The exiles are welcomed by Queen Kausalya and Queen Sumitra with a joy tinged with deep melancholy. After the long-deferred anointing of Rama as king, comes the triumphal entry into the ancestral capital, where Rama begins his virtuous reign with his beloved queen most happily; for the very hardships endured in the forest turn into pleasures when remembered in the palace. To crown the king's joy, Sita becomes pregnant, and expresses a wish to visit the forest again. At this point, where an ordinary story would end, comes the great tragedy, the tremendous test of Rama's character. The people begin to murmur about the queen, believing that she could not have preserved her purity in the giant's palace. Rama knows that she is innocent, but he also knows that he cannot be a good king while the people feel as they do; and after a pitiful struggle, he decides to put away his beloved wife. He bids his brother Lakshmana take her to the forest, in accordance with her request, but to leave her there at the hermitage of the sage Valmiki. When this is done, and Sita hears the terrible future from Lakshmana, she cries:

Take reverent greeting to the queens, my mothers, And say to each with honour due her worth: "My child is your son's child, and not another's; Oh, pray for him, before he comes to birth."

And tell the king from me: "You saw the matter, How I was guiltless proved in fire divine; Will you desert me for mere idle chatter? Are such things done in Raghu's royal line?

Ah no! I cannot think you fickle-minded, For you were always very kind to me; Fate's thunderclap by which my eyes are blinded Rewards my old, forgotten sins, I see.

Oh, I could curse my life and quickly end it, For it is useless, lived from you apart, But that I bear within, and must defend it, Your life, your child and mine, beneath my heart.

When he is born, I'll scorn my queenly station, Gaze on the sun, and live a hell on earth, That I may know no pain of separation From you, my husband, in another birth.

My king! Eternal duty bids you never Forget a hermit who for sorrow faints; Though I am exiled from your bed for ever, I claim the care you owe to all the saints."

So she accepts her fate with meek courage. But

When Rama's brother left her there to languish And bore to them she loved her final word, She loosed her throat in an excess of anguish And screamed as madly as a frightened bird.

Trees shed their flowers, the peacock-dances ended, The grasses dropped from mouths of feeding deer, As if the universal forest blended Its tears with hers, and shared her woeful fear.

While she laments thus piteously, she is discovered by the poet-sage Valmiki, who consoles her with tender and beautiful words, and conducts her to his hermitage, where she awaits the time of her confinement. Meanwhile Rama leads a dreary life, finding duty but a cold comforter. He makes a golden statue of his wife, and will not look at other women.

_Fifteenth canto. Rama goes to heaven_.--The canto opens with a rather long description of a fight between Rama's youngest brother and a giant. On the journey to meet the giant, Shatrughna spends a night in Valmiki's hermitage, and that very night Sita gives birth to twin sons. Valmiki gives them the names Kusha and Lava, and when they grow out of childhood he teaches them his own composition, the _Ramayana_, "the sweet story of Rama," "the first path shown to poets." At this time the young son of a Brahman dies in the capital, and the father laments at the king's gate, for he believes that the king is unworthy, else heaven would not send death prematurely. Rama is roused to stamp out evil-doing in the kingdom, whereupon the dead boy comes to life. The king then feels that his task on earth is nearly done, and prepares to celebrate the great horse-sacrifice.[4]

At this sacrifice appear the two youths Kusha and Lava, who sing the epic of Rama's deeds in the presence of Rama himself. The father perceives their likeness to himself, then learns that they are indeed his children, whom he has never seen. Thereupon Sita is brought forward by the poet-sage Valmiki and in the presence of her husband and her detractors establishes her constant purity in a terrible fashion.

"If I am faithful to my lord In thought, in action, and in word, I pray that Earth who bears us all May bid me in her bosom fall."

The faithful wife no sooner spoke Than earth divided, and there broke From deep within a flashing light That flamed like lightning, blinding-bright.

And, seated on a splendid throne Upheld by serpents' hoods alone, The goddess Earth rose visibly, And she was girded with the sea.

Sita was clasped in her embrace, While still she gazed on Rama's face: He cried aloud in wild despair; She sank, and left him standing there.

Rama then establishes his brothers, sons, and nephews in different cities of the kingdom, buries the three queens of his father, and awaits death. He has not long to wait; Death comes, wearing a hermit's garb, asks for a private interview, and threatens any who shall disturb their conference. Lakshmana disturbs them, and so dies before Rama. Then Rama is translated.

Cantos sixteen to nineteen form the third division of the epic, and treat of Rama's descendants. The interest wanes, for the great hero is gone.

_Sixteenth canto. Kumudvati's wedding_.--As Kusha lies awake one night, a female figure appears in his chamber; and in answer to his question, declares that she is the presiding goddess of the ancient capital Ayodhya, which has been deserted since Rama's departure to heaven. She pictures the sad state of the city thus:

I have no king; my towers and terraces Crumble and fall; my walls are overthrown; As when the ugly winds of evening seize The rack of clouds in helpless darkness blown.

In streets where maidens gaily passed at night, Where once was known the tinkle and the shine Of anklets, jackals slink, and by the light Of flashing fangs, seek carrion, snarl, and whine.

The water of the pools that used to splash With drumlike music, under maidens' hands, Groans now when bisons from the jungle lash It with their clumsy horns, and roil its sands.

The peacock-pets are wild that once were tame; They roost on trees, not perches; lose desire For dancing to the drums; and feel no shame For fans singed close by sparks of forest-fire.

On stairways where the women once were glad To leave their pink and graceful footprints, here Unwelcome, blood-stained paws of tigers pad, Fresh-smeared from slaughter of the forest deer.

Wall-painted elephants in lotus-brooks, Receiving each a lily from his mate, Are torn and gashed, as if by cruel hooks, By claws of lions, showing furious hate.

I see my pillared caryatides Neglected, weathered, stained by passing time, Wearing in place of garments that should please, The skins of sloughing cobras, foul with slime.

The balconies grow black with long neglect, And grass-blades sprout through floors no longer tight; They still receive but cannot now reflect The old, familiar moonbeams, pearly white.

The vines that blossomed in my garden bowers, That used to show their graceful beauty, when Girls gently bent their twigs and plucked their flowers, Are broken by wild apes and wilder men.

The windows are not lit by lamps at night, Nor by fair faces shining in the day, But webs of spiders dim the delicate, light Smoke-tracery with one mere daub of grey.

The river is deserted; on the shore No gaily bathing men and maidens leave Food for the swans; its reedy bowers no more Are vocal: seeing this, I can but grieve.

The goddess therefore begs Kusha to return with his court to the old capital, and when he assents, she smiles and vanishes. The next morning Kusha announces the vision of the night, and immediately sets out for Ayodhya with his whole army. Arrived there, King Kusha quickly restores the city to its former splendour. Then when the hot summer comes, the king goes down to the river to bathe with the ladies of the court. While in the water he loses a great gem which his father had given him. The divers are unable to find it, and declare their belief that it has been stolen by the serpent Kumuda who lives in the river. The king threatens to shoot an arrow into the river, whereupon the waters divide, and the serpent appears with the gem. He is accompanied by a beautiful maiden, whom he introduces as his sister Kumudvati, and whom he offers in marriage to Kusha. The offer is accepted, and the wedding celebrated with great pomp.

_Seventeenth canto. King Atithi_.--To the king and queen is born a son, who is named Atithi. When he has grown into manhood, his father Kusha engages in a struggle with a demon, in which the king is killed in the act of killing his adversary. He goes to heaven, followed by his faithful queen, and Atithi is anointed king. The remainder of the canto describes King Atithi's glorious reign.

_Eighteenth canto. The later princes_.--This canto gives a brief, impressionistic sketch of the twenty-one kings who in their order succeeded Atithi.

_Nineteenth canto. The loves of Agnivarna_.--After the twenty-one kings just mentioned, there succeeds a king named Agnivarna, who gives himself to dissipation. He shuts himself up in the palace; even when duty requires him to appear before his subjects, he does so merely by hanging one foot out of a window. He trains dancing-girls himself, and has so many mistresses that he cannot always call them by their right names. It is not wonderful that this kind of life leads before long to a consuming disease; and as Agnivarna is even then unable to resist the pleasures of the senses, he dies. His queen is pregnant, and she mounts the throne as regent in behalf of her unborn son. With this strange scene, half tragic, half vulgar, the epic, in the form in which it has come down to us, abruptly ends.

If we now endeavour to form some critical estimate of the poem, we are met at the outset by this strangely unnatural termination. We cannot avoid wondering whether the poem as we have it is complete. And we shall find that there are good reasons for believing that Kalidasa did not let the glorious solar line end in the person of the voluptuous Agnivarna and his unborn child. In the first place, there is a constant tradition which affirms that _The Dynasty of Raghu_ originally consisted of twenty-five cantos. A similar tradition concerning Kalidasa's second epic has justified itself; for some time only seven cantos were known; then more were discovered, and we now have seventeen. Again, there is a rhetorical rule, almost never disregarded, which requires a literary work to end with an epilogue in the form of a little prayer for the welfare of readers or auditors. Kalidasa himself complies with this rule, certainly in five of his other six books. Once again, Kalidasa has nothing of the tragedian in his soul; his works, without exception, end happily. In the drama _Urvashi_ he seriously injures a splendid old tragic story for the sake of a happy ending. These facts all point to the probability that the conclusion of the epic has been lost. We may even assign a natural, though conjectural, reason for this. _The Dynasty of Raghu_ has been used for centuries as a text-book in India, so that manuscripts abound, and commentaries are very numerous. Now if the concluding cantos were unfitted for use as a text-book, they might very easily be lost during the centuries before the introduction of printing-presses into India. Indeed, this very unfitness for use as a school text seems to be the explanation of the temporary loss of several cantos of Kalidasa's second epic.

On the other hand, we are met by the fact that numerous commentators, living in different parts of India, know the text of only nineteen cantos. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Kalidasa left the poem incomplete at his death; for it was, without serious question, one of his earlier works. Apart from evidences of style, there is the subject-matter of the introductory stanzas, in which the poet presents himself as an aspirant for literary fame. No writer of established reputation would be likely to say:

The fool who seeks a poet's fame, Must look for ridicule and blame, Like tiptoe dwarf who fain would try To pluck the fruit for giants high.

In only one other of his writings, in the drama which was undoubtedly written earlier than the other two dramas, does the poet thus present his feeling of diffidence to his auditors.

It is of course possible that Kalidasa wrote the first nineteen cantos when a young man, intending to add more, then turned to other matters, and never afterwards cared to take up the rather thankless task of ending a youthful work.

The question does not admit of final solution. Yet whoever reads and re-reads _The Dynasty of Raghu_, and the other works of its author, finds the conviction growing ever stronger that our poem in nineteen cantos is mutilated. We are thus enabled to clear the author of the charge of a lame and impotent conclusion.

Another adverse criticism cannot so readily be disposed of; that of a lack of unity in the plot. As the poem treats of a kingly dynasty, we frequently meet the cry: The king is dead. Long live the king! The story of Rama himself occupies only six cantos; he is not born until the tenth canto, he is in heaven after the fifteenth. There are in truth six heroes, each of whom has to die to make room for his successor. One may go farther and say that it is not possible to give a brief and accurate title to the poem. It is not a _Ramayana_, or epic of Rama's deeds, for Rama is on the stage during only a third of the poem. It is not properly an epic of Raghu's line, for many kings of this line are unmentioned. Not merely kings who escape notice by their obscurity, but also several who fill a large place in Indian story, whose deeds and adventures are splendidly worthy of epic treatment. _The Dynasty of Raghu_ is rather an epic poem in which Rama is the central figure, giving it such unity as it possesses, but which provides Rama with a most generous background in the shape of selected episodes concerning his ancestors and his descendants.

Rama is the central figure. Take him away and the poem falls to pieces like a pearl necklace with a broken string. Yet it may well be doubted whether the cantos dealing with Rama are the most successful. They are too compressed, too briefly allusive. Kalidasa attempts to tell the story in about one-thirtieth of the space given to it by his great predecessor Valmiki. The result is much loss by omission and much loss by compression. Many of the best episodes of the _Ramayana_ are quite omitted by Kalidasa: for example, the story of the jealous humpback who eggs on Queen Kaikeyi to demand her two boons; the beautiful scene in which Sita insists on following Rama into the forest; the account of the somnolent giant Pot-ear, a character quite as good as Polyphemus. Other fine episodes are so briefly alluded to as to lose all their charm: for example, the story of the golden deer that attracts the attention of Rama while Ravana is stealing his wife; the journey of the monkey Hanumat to Ravana's fortress and his interview with Sita.

The Rama-story, as told by Valmiki, is one of the great epic stories of the world. It has been for two thousand years and more the story _par excellence_ of the Hindus; and the Hindus may fairly claim to be the best story-tellers of the world. There is therefore real matter for regret in the fact that so great a poet as Kalidasa should have treated it in a way not quite worthy of it and of himself. The reason is not far to seek, nor can there be any reasonable doubt as to its truth. Kalidasa did not care to put himself into direct competition with Valmiki. The younger poet's admiration of his mighty predecessor is clearly expressed. It is with especial reference to Valmiki that he says in his introduction:

Yet I may enter through the door That mightier poets pierced of yore; A thread may pierce a jewel, but Must follow where the diamond cut.

He introduces Valmiki into his own epic, making him compose the _Ramayana_ in Rama's lifetime. Kalidasa speaks of Valmiki as "the poet," and the great epic he calls "the sweet story of Rama," "the first path shown to poets," which, when sung by the two boys, was heard with motionless delight by the deer, and, when sung before a gathering of learned men, made them heedless of the tears that rolled down their cheeks.

Bearing these matters in mind, we can see the course of Kalidasa's thoughts almost as clearly as if he had expressed them directly. He was irresistibly driven to write the wonderful story of Rama, as any poet would be who became familiar with it. At the same time, his modesty prevented him from challenging the old epic directly. He therefore writes a poem which shall appeal to the hallowed association that cluster round the great name of Rama, but devotes two-thirds of it to themes that permit him greater freedom. The result is a formless plot.

This is a real weakness, yet not a fatal weakness. In general, literary critics lay far too much emphasis on plot. Of the elements that make a great book, two, style and presentation of character, hardly permit critical analysis. The third, plot, does permit such analysis. Therefore the analyst overrates its importance. It is fatal to all claim of greatness in a narrative if it is shown to have a bad style or to be without interesting characters. It is not fatal if it is shown that the plot is rambling. In recent literature it is easy to find truly great narratives in which the plot leaves much to be desired. We may cite the _Pickwick Papers, Les Misérables, War and Peace_.

We must then regard _The Dynasty of Raghu_ as a poem in which single episodes take a stronger hold upon the reader than does the unfolding of an ingenious plot. In some degree, this is true of all long poems. The _Æneid_ itself, the most perfect long poem ever written, has dull passages. And when this allowance is made, what wonderful passages we have in Kalidasa's poem! One hardly knows which of them makes the strongest appeal, so many are they and so varied. There is the description of the small boy Raghu in the third canto, the choice of the princess in the sixth, the lament of King Aja in the eighth, the story of Dasharatha and the hermit youth in the ninth, the account of the ruined city in the sixteenth. Besides these, the Rama cantos, ten to fifteen, make an epic within an epic. And if Kalidasa is not seen at his very best here, yet his second best is of a higher quality than the best of others. Also, the Rama story is so moving that a mere allusion to it stirs like a sentimental memory of childhood. It has the usual qualities of a good epic story: abundance of travel and fighting and adventure and magic interweaving of human with superhuman, but it has more than this. In both hero and heroine there is real development of character. Odysseus and Æneas do not grow; they go through adventures. But King Rama, torn between love for his wife and duty to his subjects, is almost a different person from the handsome, light-hearted prince who won his bride by breaking Shiva's bow. Sita, faithful to the husband who rejects her, has made a long, character-forming journey since the day when she left her father's palace, a youthful bride. Herein lies the unique beauty of the tale of Rama, that it unites romantic love and moral conflict with a splendid story of wild adventure. No wonder that the Hindus, connoisseurs of story-telling, have loved the tale of Rama's deeds better than any other story.

If we compare _The Dynasty of Raghu_ with Kalidasa's other books, we find it inferior to _The Birth of the War-god_ in unity of plot, inferior to _Shakuntala_ in sustained interest, inferior to _The Cloud-Messenger_ in perfection of every detail. Yet passages in it are as high and sweet as anything in these works. And over it is shed the magic charm of Kalidasa's style. Of that it is vain to speak. It can be had only at first hand. The final proof that _The Dynasty of Raghu_ is a very great poem, is this: no one who once reads it can leave it alone thereafter.{}

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: If a king aspired to the title of emperor, or king of kings, he was at liberty to celebrate the horse-sacrifice. A horse was set free to wander at will for a year, and was escorted by a band of noble youths who were not permitted to interfere with his movements. If the horse wandered into the territory of another king, such king must either submit to be the vassal of the horse's owner, or must fight him. If the owner of the horse received the submission, with or without fighting, of all the kings into whose territories the horse wandered during the year of freedom, he offered the horse in sacrifice and assumed the imperial title.]

[Footnote 2: This is not the place to discuss the many interesting questions of geography and ethnology suggested by the fourth canto. But it is important to notice that Kalidasa had at least superficial knowledge of the entire Indian peninsula and of certain outlying regions.]

[Footnote 3: A girl of the warrior caste had the privilege of choosing her husband. The procedure was this. All the eligible youths of the neighbourhood were invited to her house, and were lavishly entertained. On the appointed day, they assembled in a hall of the palace, and the maiden entered with a garland in her hand. The suitors were presented to her with some account of their claims upon her attention, after which she threw the garland around the neck of him whom she preferred.]

[Footnote 4: See footnote, p. 128.]

* * * * *

THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD

_The Birth of the War-god_ is an epic poem in seventeen cantos. It consists of 1096 stanzas, or about 4400 lines of verse. The subject is the marriage of the god Shiva, the birth of his son, and the victory of this son over a powerful demon. The story was not invented by Kalidasa, but taken from old mythology. Yet it had never been told in so masterly a fashion as had been the story of Rama's deeds by Valmiki. Kalidasa is therefore under less constraint in writing this epic than in writing _The Dynasty of Raghu_. I give first a somewhat detailed analysis of the matter of the poem.

_First canto. The birth of Parvati_.--The poem begins with a description of the great Himalaya mountain-range.

God of the distant north, the Snowy Range O'er other mountains towers imperially; Earth's measuring-rod, being great and free from change, Sinks to the eastern and the western sea.

Whose countless wealth of natural gems is not Too deeply blemished by the cruel snow; One fault for many virtues is forgot, The moon's one stain for beams that endless flow.

Where demigods enjoy the shade of clouds Girding his lower crests, but often seek, When startled by the sudden rain that shrouds His waist, some loftier, ever sunlit peak.

Where bark of birch-trees makes, when torn in strips And streaked with mountain minerals that blend To written words 'neath dainty finger-tips, Such dear love-letters as the fairies send.

Whose organ-pipes are stems of bamboo, which Are filled from cavern-winds that know no rest, As if the mountain strove to set the pitch For songs that angels sing upon his crest.

Where magic herbs that glitter in the night Are lamps that need no oil within them, when They fill cave-dwellings with their shimmering light And shine upon the loves of mountain men.

Who offers roof and refuge in his caves To timid darkness shrinking from the day; A lofty soul is generous; he saves Such honest cowards as for protection pray,

Who brings to birth the plants of sacrifice; Who steadies earth, so strong is he and broad. The great Creator, for this service' price, Made him the king of mountains, and a god.

Himalaya marries a wife, to whom in course of time a daughter is born, as wealth is born when ambition pairs with character. The child is named Parvati, that is, daughter of the mountain. Her father takes infinite delight in her, as well he may; for

She brought him purity and beauty too, As white flames to the lamp that burns at night; Or Ganges to the path whereby the true Reach heaven; or judgment to the erudite.

She passes through a happy childhood of sand-piles, balls, dolls, and little girl friends, when all at once young womanhood comes upon her.

As pictures waken to the painter's brush, Or lilies open to the morning sun, Her perfect beauty answered to the flush Of womanhood when childish days were done.

Suppose a blossom on a leafy spray; Suppose a pearl on spotless coral laid: Such was the smile, pure, radiantly gay, That round her red, red lips for ever played.

And when she spoke, the music of her tale Was sweet, the music of her voice to suit, Till listeners felt as if the nightingale Had grown discordant like a jangled lute.

It is predicted by a heavenly being that she will one day become the wife of the god Shiva. This prediction awakens her father's pride, and also his impatience, since Shiva makes no advances. For the destined bridegroom is at this time leading a life of stern austerity and self-denial upon a mountain peak. Himalaya therefore bids his daughter wait upon Shiva. She does so, but without being able to divert him from his austerities.

_Second canto. Brahma's self-revelation_.--At this time, the gods betake themselves to Brahma, the Creator, and sing a hymn of praise, a part of which is given here.

Before creation, thou art one; Three, when creation's work is done: All praise and honour unto thee In this thy mystic trinity.

Three various forms and functions three Proclaim thy living majesty; Thou dost create, and then maintain, And last, destroyest all again.

Thy slow recurrent day and night Bring death to all, or living light. We live beneath thy waking eye; Thou sleepest, and thy creatures die.

Solid and fluid, great and small, And light and heavy--Thou art all; Matter and form are both in thee: Thy powers are past discovery.[]

Thou art the objects that unroll Their drama for the passive soul; Thou art the soul that views the play Indifferently, day by day.

Thou art the knower and the known; Eater and food art thou alone; The priest and his oblation fair; The prayerful suppliant and the prayer.

Brahma receives their worship graciously, and asks the reason of their coming. The spokesman of the gods explains to Brahma how a great demon named Taraka is troubling the world, and how helpless they are in opposing him. They have tried the most extravagant propitiation, and found it useless.

The sun in heaven dare not glow With undiminished heat, but so As that the lilies may awake Which blossom in his pleasure-lake.

The wind blows gently as it can To serve him as a soothing fan, And dare not manifest its power, Lest it should steal a garden flower.

The seasons have forgotten how To follow one another now; They simultaneously bring Him flowers of autumn, summer, spring.

Such adoration makes him worse; He troubles all the universe: Kindness inflames a rascal's mind; He should be recompensed in kind.

And all the means that we have tried Against the rogue, are brushed aside, As potent herbs have no avail When bodily powers begin to fail.

We seek a leader, O our Lord, To bring him to his just reward-- As saints seek evermore to win Virtue, to end life's woe and sin--

That he may guide the heavenly host, And guard us to the uttermost, And from our foe lead captive back The victory which still we lack.

Brahma answers that the demon's power comes from him, and he does not feel at liberty to proceed against it; "for it is not fitting to cut down even a poison-tree that one's own hand has planted." But he promises that a son shall be born to Shiva and Parvati, who shall lead the gods to victory. With this answer the gods are perforce content, and their king, Indra, waits upon the god of love, to secure his necessary co-operation.

_Third canto. The burning of Love_.--Indra waits upon Love, who asks for his commands. Indra explains the matter, and asks Love to inflame Shiva with passion for Parvati. Love thereupon sets out, accompanied by his wife Charm and his friend Spring. When they reach the mountain where Shiva dwells, Spring shows his power. The snow disappears; the trees put forth blossoms; bees, deer, and birds waken to new life. The only living being that is not influenced by the sudden change of season is Shiva, who continues his meditation, unmoved. Love himself is discouraged, until he sees the beauty of Parvati, when he takes heart again. At this moment, Shiva chances to relax his meditation, and Parvati approaches to do him homage. Love seizes the lucky moment, and prepares to shoot his bewildering arrow at Shiva. But the great god sees him, and before the arrow is discharged, darts fire from his eye, whereby Love is consumed. Charm falls in a swoon, Shiva vanishes, and the wretched Parvati is carried away by her father.

_Fourth canto. The lament of Charm_.--This canto is given entire.

The wife of Love lay helpless in a swoon, Till wakened by a fate whose deadliest sting Was preparation of herself full soon To taste the youthful widow's sorrowing.

Her opening eyes were fixed with anxious thought On every spot where he might be, in vain, Were gladdened nowhere by the sight she sought, The lover she should never see again.

She rose and cried aloud: "Dost thou yet live, Lord of my life?" And at the last she found Him whom the wrathful god could not forgive, Her Love, a trace of ashes on the ground.

With breaking heart, with lovely bosom stained By cold embrace of earth, with flying hair, She wept and to the forest world complained, As if the forest in her grief might share.

"Thy beauty slew the pride that maidens cherish; Perfect its loveliness in every part; I saw that beauty fade away and perish, Yet did not die. How hard is woman's heart!

Where art thou gone? Thy love a moment only Endured, and I for ever need its power; Gone like the stream that leaves the lily lonely, When the dam breaks, to mourn her dying flower.

Thou never didst a thing to cause me anguish; I never did a thing to work thee harm; Why should I thus in vain affliction languish? Why not return to bless thy grieving Charm?

Of playful chastisements art thou reminded, Thy flirtings punished by my girdle-strands, Thine eyes by flying dust of blossoms blinded, Held for thy meet correction in these hands?

I loved to hear the name thou gav'st me often 'Heart of my heart,' Alas! It was not true, But lulling phrase, my coming grief to soften: Else in thy death, my life had ended, too.

Think not that on the journey thou hast taken So newly, I should fail to find thy track; Ah, but the world! The world is quite forsaken, For life is love; no life, when thee they lack.

Thou gone, my love, what power can guide the maiden Through veils of midnight darkness in the town To the eager heart with loving fancies laden, And fortify against the storm-cloud's frown?

The wine that teaches eyes their gladdest dances, That bids the love-word trippingly to glide, Is now deception; for if flashing glances Lead not to love, they lead to naught beside.

And when he knows thy life is a remembrance, Thy friend the moon will feel his shining vain, Will cease to show the world a circle's semblance, And even in his waxing time, will wane.

Slowly the mango-blossoms are unfolding On twigs where pink is struggling with the green, Greeted by koïl-birds sweet concert holding-- Thou dead, who makes of flowers an arrow keen?

Or weaves a string of bees with deft invention, To speed the missile when the bow is bent? They buzz about me now with kind intention, And mortify the grief which they lament.

Arise! Assume again thy radiant beauty! Rebuke the koïl-bird, whom nature taught Such sweet persuasion; she forgets her duty As messenger to bosoms passion-fraught.

Well I remember, Love, thy suppliant motion, Thy trembling, quick embrace, the moments blest By fervent, self-surrendering devotion-- And memories like these deny me rest.

Well didst thou know thy wife; the springtime garland, Wrought by thy hands, O charmer of thy Charm! Remains to bid me grieve, while in a far land Thy body seeks repose from earthly harm.

Thy service by the cruel gods demanded, Meant service to thy wife left incomplete, My bare feet with coquettish streakings banded-- Return to end the adorning of my feet.

No, straight to thee I fly, my body given, A headlong moth, to quick-consuming fire, Or e'er my cunning rivals, nymphs in heaven, Awake in thee an answering desire.

Yet, dearest, even this short delay is fated For evermore a deep reproach to prove, A stain that may not be obliterated, If Charm has lived one moment far from Love.

And how can I perform the last adorning Of thy poor body, as befits a wife? So strangely on the path that leaves me mourning Thy body followed still the spirit's life.

I see thee straighten out thy blossom-arrow, The bow slung careless on thy breast the while, Thine eyes in mirthful, sidelong glance grow narrow, Thy conference with friendly Spring, thy smile.

But where is Spring? Dear friend, whose art could fashion The flowery arrow for thee? Has the wrath Of dreadful Shiva, in excess of passion, Bade him, too, follow on that fatal path?"

Heart-smitten by the accents of her grief Like poisoned darts, soothing her fond alarm, Incarnate Spring appeared, to bring relief As friendship can, to sore-lamenting Charm.

And at the sight of him, she wept the more, And often clutched her throat, and beat her breast; For lamentation finds an open door In the presence of the friends we love the best.

Stifling, she cried: "Behold the mournful matter! In place of him thou seekest, what is found? A something that the winds of heaven scatter, A trace of dove-grey ashes on the ground.

Arise, O Love! For Spring knows no estranging, Thy friend in lucky hap and evil lot; Man's love for wife is ever doubtful, changing; Man's love for man abides and changes not.

With such a friend, thy dart, on dainty pinion Of blossoms, shot from lotus-fibre string, Reduced men, giants, gods to thy dominion-- The triple world has felt that arrow sting.

But Love is gone, far gone beyond returning, A candle snuffed by wandering breezes vain; And see! I am his wick, with Love once burning, Now blackened by the smoke of nameless pain.

In slaying Love, fate wrought but half a slaughter, For I am left. And yet the clinging vine Must fall, when falls the sturdy tree that taught her Round him in loving tenderness to twine.

So then, fulfil for me the final mission Of him who undertakes a kinsman's part; Commit me to the flames (my last petition) And speed the widow to her husband's heart.

The moonlight wanders not, the moon forsaking; Where sails the cloud, the lightning is not far; Wife follows mate, is law of nature's making, Yes, even among such things as lifeless are.

My breast is stained; I lay among the ashes Of him I loved with all a woman's powers; Now let me lie where death-fire flames and flashes, As glad as on a bed of budding flowers.

Sweet Spring, thou camest oft where we lay sleeping On blossoms, I and he whose life is sped; Unto the end thy friendly office keeping, Prepare for me the last, the fiery bed.

And fan the flame to which I am committed With southern winds; I would no longer stay; Thou knowest well how slow the moments flitted For Love, my love, when I was far away.

And sprinkle some few drops of water, given In friendship, on his ashes and on me; That Love and I may quench our thirst in heaven As once on earth, in heavenly unity.

And sometimes seek the grave where Love is lying; Pause there a moment, gentle Spring, and shower Sweet mango-clusters to the winds replying; For he thou lovedst, loved the mango-flower."

As Charm prepared to end her mortal pain In fire, she heard a voice from heaven cry, That showed her mercy, as the early rain Shows mercy to the fish, when lakes go dry:

"O wife of Love! Thy lover is not lost For evermore. This voice shall tell thee why He perished like the moth, when he had crossed The dreadful god, in fire from Shiva's eye.

When darts of Love set Brahma in a flame, To shame his daughter with impure desire, He checked the horrid sin without a name, And cursed the god of love to die by fire.

But Virtue interceded in behalf Of Love, and won a softening of the doom: 'Upon the day when Shiva's heart shall laugh In wedding joy, for mercy finding room,

He shall unite Love's body with the soul, A marriage-present to his mountain bride.' As clouds hold fire and water in control, Gods are the fount of wrath, and grace beside.

So, gentle Charm, preserve thy body sweet For dear reunion after present pain; The stream that dwindles in the summer heat, Is reunited with the autumn rain."

Invisibly and thus mysteriously The thoughts of Charm were turned away from death; And Spring, believing where he might not see, Comforted her with words of sweetest breath.

The wife of Love awaited thus the day, Though racked by grief, when fate should show its power, As the waning moon laments her darkened ray And waits impatient for the twilight hour.

_Fifth canto. The reward of self-denial_.--Parvati reproaches her own beauty, for "loveliness is fruitless if it does not bind a lover." She therefore resolves to lead a life of religious self-denial, hoping that the merit thus acquired will procure her Shiva's love. Her mother tries in vain to dissuade her; her father directs her to a fit mountain peak, and she retires to her devotions. She lays aside all ornaments, lets her hair hang unkempt, and assumes the hermit's dress of bark. While she is spending her days in self-denial, she is visited by a Brahman youth, who compliments her highly upon her rigid devotion, and declares that her conduct proves the truth of the proverb: Beauty can do no wrong. Yet he confesses himself bewildered, for she seems to have everything that heart can desire. He therefore asks her purpose in performing these austerities, and is told how her desires are fixed upon the highest of all objects, upon the god Shiva himself, and how, since Love is dead, she sees no way to win him except by ascetic religion. The youth tries to dissuade Parvati by recounting all the dreadful legends that are current about Shiva: how he wears a coiling snake on his wrist, a bloody elephant-hide upon his back, how he dwells in a graveyard, how he rides upon an undignified bull, how poor he is and of unknown birth. Parvati's anger is awakened by this recital. She frowns and her lip quivers as she defends herself and the object of her love.

Shiva, she said, is far beyond the thought Of such as you: then speak no more to me. Dull crawlers hate the splendid wonders wrought By lofty souls untouched by rivalry.

They search for wealth, whom dreaded evil nears, Or they who fain would rise a little higher; The world's sole refuge neither hopes nor fears Nor seeks the objects of a small desire.

Yes, he is poor, yet he is riches' source; This graveyard-haunter rules the world alone; Dreadful is he, yet all beneficent force: Think you his inmost nature can be known?

All forms are his; and he may take or leave At will, the snake, or gem with lustre white; The bloody skin, or silk of softest weave; Dead skulls, or moonbeams radiantly bright.

For poverty he rides upon a bull, While Indra, king of heaven, elephant-borne, Bows low to strew his feet with beautiful, Unfading blossoms in his chaplet worn.

Yet in the slander spoken in pure hate One thing you uttered worthy of his worth: How could the author of the uncreate Be born? How could we understand his birth?

Enough of this! Though every word that you Have said, be faithful, yet would Shiva please My eager heart all made of passion true For him alone. Love sees no blemishes.

In response to this eloquence, the youth throws off his disguise, appearing as the god Shiva himself, and declares his love for her. Parvati immediately discontinues her religious asceticism; for "successful effort regenerates."

_Sixth canto. Parvati is given in marriage_.--While Parvati departs to inform her father of what has happened, Shiva summons the seven sages, who are to make the formal proposal of marriage to the bride's parents. The seven sages appear, flying through the air, and with them Arundhati, the heavenly model of wifely faith and devotion. On seeing her, Shiva feels his eagerness for marriage increase, realising that

All actions of a holy life Are rooted in a virtuous wife.

Shiva then explains his purpose, and sends the seven sages to make the formal request for Parvati's hand. The seven sages fly to the brilliant city of Himalaya, where they are received by the mountain god. After a rather portentous interchange of compliments, the seven sages announce their errand, requesting Parvati's hand in behalf of Shiva. The father joyfully assents, and it is agreed that the marriage shall be celebrated after three days. These three days are spent by Shiva in impatient longing.

_Seventh canto. Parvati's wedding_.--The three days are spent in preparations for the wedding. So great is Parvati's unadorned beauty that the waiting-women can hardly take their eyes from her to inspect the wedding-dress. But the preparations are complete at last; and the bride is beautiful indeed.

As when the flowers are budding on a vine, Or white swans rest upon a river's shore, Or when at night the stars in heaven shine, Her lovely beauty grew with gems she wore.

When wide-eyed glances gave her back the same Bright beauty--and the mirror never lies-- She waited with impatience till he came: For women dress to please their lovers' eyes.

Meanwhile Shiva finishes his preparations, and sets out on his wedding journey, accompanied by Brahma, Vishnu, and lesser gods. At his journey's end, he is received by his bride's father, and led through streets ankle-deep in flowers, where the windows are filled with the faces of eager and excited women, who gossip together thus:

For his sake it was well that Parvati Should mortify her body delicate; Thrice happy might his serving-woman be, And infinitely blest his bosom's mate.

Shiva and his retinue then enter the palace, where he is received with bashful love by Parvati, and the wedding is celebrated with due pomp. The nymphs of heaven entertain the company with a play, and Shiva restores the body of Love.

_Eighth canto. The honeymoon_.--The first month of marital bliss is spent in Himalaya's palace. After this the happy pair wander for a time among the famous mountain-peaks. One of these they reach at sunset, and Shiva describes the evening glow to his bride. A few stanzas are given here.

See, my belovèd, how the sun With beams that o'er the water shake From western skies has now begun A bridge of gold across the lake.

Upon the very tree-tops sway The peacocks; even yet they hold And drink the dying light of day, Until their fans are molten gold.

The water-lily closes, but With wonderful reluctancy; As if it troubled her to shut Her door of welcome to the bee.

The steeds that draw the sun's bright car, With bended neck and falling plume And drooping mane, are seen afar To bury day in ocean's gloom.

The sun is down, and heaven sleeps: Thus every path of glory ends; As high as are the scaled steeps, The downward way as low descends.

Shiva then retires for meditation. On his return, he finds that his bride is peevish at being left alone even for a little time, and to soothe her, he describes the night which is now advancing. A few stanzas of this description run as follows.

The twilight glow is fading far And stains the west with blood-red light, As when a reeking scimitar Slants upward on a field of fight.

And vision fails above, below, Around, before us, at our back; The womb of night envelops slow The world with darkness vast and black.

Mute while the world is dazed with light, The smiling moon begins to rise And, being teased by eager night, Betrays the secrets of the skies.

Moon-fingers move the black, black hair Of night into its proper place, Who shuts her eyes, the lilies fair, As he sets kisses on her face.

Shiva and Parvati then drink wine brought them by the guardian goddess of the grove, and in this lovely spot they dwell happily for many years.

_Ninth canto. The journey to Mount Kailasa_.--One day the god of fire appears as a messenger from the gods before Shiva, to remonstrate with him for not begetting the son upon whom heaven's welfare depends. Shiva deposits his seed in Fire, who departs, bent low with the burden. Shortly afterwards the gods wait upon Shiva and Parvati, who journey with them to Mount Kailasa, the splendid dwelling-place of the god of wealth. Here also Shiva and Parvati spend happy days.

_Tenth canto. The birth of Kumara_.--To Indra, king of the gods, Fire betakes himself, tells his story, and begs to be relieved of his burden. Indra advises him to deposit it in the Ganges. Fire therefore travels to the Ganges, leaves Shiva's seed in the river, and departs much relieved. But now it is the turn of Ganges to be distressed, until at dawn the six Pleiades come to bathe in the river. They find Shiva's seed and lay it in a nest of reeds, where it becomes a child, Kumara, the future god of war.

_Eleventh canto. The birth of Kumara, continued_.--Ganges suckles the beautiful infant. But there arises a dispute for the possession of the child between Fire, Ganges, and the Pleiades. At this point Shiva and Parvati arrive, and Parvati, wondering at the beauty of the infant and at the strange quarrel, asks Shiva to whom the child belongs. When Shiva tells her that Kumara is their own child, her joy is unbounded.

Because her eyes with happy tears were dim, 'Twas but by snatches that she saw the boy; Yet, with her blossom-hand caressing him, She felt a strange, an unimagined joy.

The vision of the infant made her seem A flower unfolding in mysterious bliss; Or, billowy with her joyful tears, a stream; Or pure affection, perfect in a kiss.

Shiva conducts Parvati and the boy back to Mount Kailasa, where gods and fairies welcome them with music and dancing. Here the divine child spends the days of a happy infancy, not very different from human infancy; for he learns to walk, gets dirty in the courtyard, laughs a good deal, pulls the scanty hair of an old servant, and learns to count: "One, nine, two, ten, five, seven." These evidences of healthy development cause Shiva and Parvati the most exquisite joy.

_Twelfth canto. Kumara is made general_.--Indra, with the other gods, waits upon Shiva, to ask that Kumara, now a youth, may be lent to them as their leader in the campaign against Taraka. The gods are graciously received by Shiva, who asks their errand. Indra prefers their request, whereupon Shiva bids his son assume command of the gods, and slay Taraka. Great is the joy of Kumara himself, of his mother Parvati, and of Indra.

_Thirteenth canto. Kumara is consecrated general_.--Kumara takes an affectionate farewell of his parents, and sets out with the gods. When they come to Indra's paradise, the gods are afraid to enter, lest they find their enemy there. There is an amusing scene in which each courteously invites the others to precede him, until Kumara ends their embarrassment by leading the way. Here for the first time Kumara sees with deep respect the heavenly Ganges, Indra's garden and palace, and the heavenly city. But he becomes red-eyed with anger on beholding the devastation wrought by Taraka.

He saw departed glory, saw the state Neglected, ruined, sad, of Indra's city, As of a woman with a cowardly mate: And all his inmost heart dissolved in pity.

He saw how crystal floors were gashed and torn By wanton tusks of elephants, were strewed With skins that sloughing cobras once had worn: And sadness overcame him as he viewed.

He saw beside the bathing-pools the bowers Defiled by elephants grown overbold, Strewn with uprooted golden lotus-flowers, No longer bright with plumage of pure gold,

Rough with great, jewelled columns overthrown, Rank with invasion of the untrimmed grass: Shame strove with sorrow at the ruin shown, For heaven's foe had brought these things to pass.

Amid these sorrowful surroundings the gods gather and anoint Kumara, thus consecrating him as their general.

_Fourteenth canto. The march_.--Kumara prepares for battle, and marshals his army. He is followed by Indra riding on an elephant, Agni on a ram, Yama on a buffalo, a giant on a ghost, Varuna on a dolphin, and many other lesser gods. When all is ready, the army sets out on its dusty march.

_Fifteenth canto. The two armies clash_.--The demon Taraka is informed that the hostile army is approaching, but scorns the often-conquered Indra and the boy Kumara. Nevertheless, he prepares for battle, marshals his army, and sets forth to meet the gods. But he is beset by dreadful omens of evil.

For foul birds came, a horrid flock to see, Above the army of the foes of heaven, And dimmed the sun, awaiting ravenously The feast of demon corpses to be given.

And monstrous snakes, as black as powdered soot, Spitting hot poison high into the air, Brought terror to the army underfoot, And crept and coiled and crawled before them there.

The sun a sickly halo round him had; Coiling within it frightened eyes could see Great, writhing serpents, enviously glad Because the demon's death so soon should be.

And in the very circle of the sun Were phantom jackals, snarling to be fed; And with impatient haste they seemed to run To drink the demon's blood in battle shed.

There fell, with darting flame and blinding flash Lighting the farthest heavens, from on high A thunderbolt whose agonising crash Brought fear and shuddering from a cloudless sky.

There came a pelting rain of blazing coals With blood and bones of dead men mingled in; Smoke and weird flashes horrified their souls; The sky was dusty grey like asses' skin.

The elephants stumbled and the horses fell, The footmen jostled, leaving each his post, The ground beneath them trembled at the swell Of ocean, when an earthquake shook the host.

And dogs before them lifted muzzles foul To see the sun that lit that awful day, And pierced the ears of listeners with a howl Dreadful yet pitiful, then slunk away.

Taraka's counsellors endeavour to persuade him to turn back, but he refuses; for timidity is not numbered among his faults. As he advances even worse portents appear, and finally warning voices from heaven call upon him to desist from his undertaking. The voices assure him of Kumara's prowess and inevitable victory; they advise him to make his peace while there is yet time. But Taraka's only answer is a defiance.

"You mighty gods that flit about in heaven And take my foeman's part, what would you say? Have you forgot so soon the torture given By shafts of mine that never miss their way?

Why should I fear before a six-days child? Why should you prowl in heaven and gibber shrill, Like dogs that in an autumn night run wild, Like deer that sneak through forests, trembling still?

The boy whom you have chosen as your chief In vain upon his hermit-sire shall cry; The upright die, if taken with a thief: First you shall perish, then he too shall die."

And as Taraka emphasises his meaning by brandishing his great sword, the warning spirits flee, their knees knocking together. Taraka laughs horribly, then mounts his chariot, and advances against the army of the gods. On the other side the gods advance, and the two armies clash.

_Sixteenth canto. The battle between gods and demons_.--This canto is entirely taken up with the struggle between the two armies. A few stanzas are given here.

As pairs of champions stood forth To test each other's fighting worth, The bards who knew the family fame Proclaimed aloud each mighty name.

As ruthless weapons cut their way Through quilted armour in the fray, White tufts of cotton flew on high Like hoary hairs upon the sky.

Blood-dripping swords reflected bright The sunbeams in that awful fight; Fire-darting like the lightning-flash, They showed how mighty heroes clash.

The archers' arrows flew so fast, As through a hostile breast they passed, That they were buried in the ground, No stain of blood upon them found.

The swords that sheaths no longer clasped, That hands of heroes firmly grasped, Flashed out in glory through the fight, As if they laughed in mad delight.

And many a warrior's eager lance Shone radiant in the eerie dance, A curling, lapping tongue of death To lick away the soldier's breath.

Some, panting with a bloody thirst, Fought toward the victim chosen first, But had a reeking path to hew Before they had him full in view.

Great elephants, their drivers gone And pierced with arrows, struggled on, But sank at every step in mud Made liquid by the streams of blood.

The warriors falling in the fray, Whose heads the sword had lopped away, Were able still to fetch a blow That slew the loud-exulting foe.

The footmen thrown to Paradise By elephants of monstrous size, Were seized upon by nymphs above, Exchanging battle-scenes for love.

The lancer, charging at his foe, Would pierce him through and bring him low, And would not heed the hostile dart That found a lodgment in his heart.

The war-horse, though unguided, stopped The moment that his rider dropped, And wept above the lifeless head, Still faithful to his master dead.

Two lancers fell with mortal wound And still they struggled on the ground; With bristling hair, with brandished knife, Each strove to end the other's life.

Two slew each other in the fight; To Paradise they took their flight; There with a nymph they fell in love, And still they fought in heaven above.

Two souls there were that reached the sky; From heights of heaven they could spy Two writhing corpses on the plain, And knew their headless forms again.

As the struggle comes to no decisive issue, Taraka seeks out the chief gods, and charges upon them.

_Seventeenth canto. Taraka is slain_.--Taraka engages the principal gods and defeats them with magic weapons. When they are relieved by Kumara, the demon turns to the youthful god of war, and advises him to retire from the battle.

Stripling, you are the only son Of Shiva and of Parvati. Go safe and live! Why should you run On certain death? Why fight with me? Withdraw! Let sire and mother blest Clasp living son to joyful breast.

Flee, son of Shiva, flee the host Of Indra drowning in the sea That soon shall close upon his boast In choking waves of misery. For Indra is a ship of stone; Withdraw, and let him sink alone.

Kumara answers with modest firmness.

The words you utter in your pride, O demon-prince, are only fit; Yet I am minded to abide The fight, and see the end of it. The tight-strung bow and brandished sword Decide, and not the spoken word.

And with this the duel begins. When Taraka finds his arrows parried by Kumara, he employs the magic weapon of the god of wind. When this too is parried, he uses the magic weapon of the god of fire, which Kumara neutralises with the weapon of the god of water. As they fight on, Kumara finds an opening, and slays Taraka with his lance, to the unbounded delight of the universe.

Here the poem ends, in the form in which it has come down to us. It has been sometimes thought that we have less than Kalidasa wrote, partly because of a vague tradition that there were once twenty-three cantos, partly because the customary prayer is lacking at the end. These arguments are not very cogent. Though the concluding prayer is not given in form, yet the stanzas which describe the joy of the universe fairly fill its place. And one does not see with what matter further cantos would be concerned. The action promised in the earlier part is completed in the seventeenth canto.

It has been somewhat more formidably argued that the concluding cantos are spurious, that Kalidasa wrote only the first seven or perhaps the first eight cantos. Yet, after all, what do these arguments amount to? Hardly more than this, that the first eight cantos are better poetry than the last nine. As if a poet were always at his best, even when writing on a kind of subject not calculated to call out his best. Fighting is not Kalidasa's _forte_; love is. Even so, there is great vigour in the journey of Taraka, the battle, and the duel. It may not be the highest kind of poetry, but it is wonderfully vigorous poetry of its kind. And if we reject the last nine cantos, we fall into a very much greater difficulty. The poem would be glaringly incomplete, its early promise obviously disregarded. We should have a _Birth of the War-god_ in which the poet stopped before the war-god was born.

There seems then no good reason to doubt that we have the epic substantially as Kalidasa wrote it. Plainly, it has a unity which is lacking in Kalidasa's other epic, _The Dynasty_ _of Raghu_, though in this epic, too, the interest shifts. Parvati's love-affair is the matter of the first half, Kumara's fight with the demon the matter of the second half. Further, it must be admitted that the interest runs a little thin. Even in India, where the world of gods runs insensibly into the world of men, human beings take more interest in the adventures of men than of gods. The gods, indeed, can hardly have adventures; they must be victorious. _The Birth of the War-god_ pays for its greater unity by a poverty of adventure.

It would be interesting if we could know whether this epic was written before or after _The Dynasty of Raghu_. But we have no data for deciding the question, hardly any for even arguing it. The introduction to _The Dynasty of Raghu_ seems, indeed, to have been written by a poet who yet had his spurs to win. But this is all.

As to the comparative excellence of the two epics, opinions differ. My own preference is for _The Dynasty of Raghu_, yet there are passages in _The Birth of the War-god_ of a piercing beauty which the world can never let die.

* * * * *

THE CLOUD-MESSENGER

In _The Cloud-Messenger_ Kalidasa created a new _genre_ in Sanskrit literature. Hindu critics class the poem with _The Dynasty of Raghu_ and _The Birth of the War-god_ as a _kavya_, or learned epic. This it obviously is not. It is fair enough to call it an elegiac poem, though a precisian might object to the term.

We have already seen, in speaking of _The Dynasty of Raghu_, what admiration Kalidasa felt for his great predecessor Valmiki, the author of the _Ramayana_; and it is quite possible that an episode of the early epic suggested to him the idea which he has exquisitely treated in _The Cloud-Messenger_. In the _Ramayana_, after the defeat and death of Ravana, Rama returns with his wife and certain heroes of the struggle from Ceylon to his home in Northern India. The journey, made in an aërial car, gives the author an opportunity to describe the country over which the car must pass in travelling from one end of India to the other. The hint thus given him was taken by Kalidasa; a whole canto of _The Dynasty of Raghu_ (the thirteenth) is concerned with the aërial journey. Now if, as seems not improbable, _The Dynasty of Raghu_ was the earliest of Kalidasa's more ambitious works, it is perhaps legitimate to imagine him, as he wrote this canto, suddenly inspired with the plan of _The Cloud-Messenger_.

This plan is slight and fanciful. A demigod, in consequence of some transgression against his master, the god of wealth, is condemned to leave his home in the Himalayas, and spend a year of exile on a peak in the Vindhya Mountains, which divide the Deccan from the Ganges basin. He wishes to comfort and encourage his wife, but has no messenger to send her. In his despair, he begs a passing cloud to carry his words. He finds it necessary to describe the long journey which the cloud must take, and, as the two termini are skilfully chosen, the journey involves a visit to many of the spots famous in Indian story. The description of these spots fills the first half of the poem. The second half is filled with a more minute description of the heavenly city, of the home and bride of the demigod, and with the message proper. The proportions of the poem may appear unfortunate to the Western reader, in whom the proper names of the first half will wake scanty associations. Indeed, it is no longer possible to identify all the places mentioned, though the general route followed by the cloud can be easily traced. The peak from which he starts is probably one near the modern Nagpore. From this peak he flies a little west of north to the Nerbudda River, and the city of Ujjain; thence pretty straight north to the upper Ganges and the Himalaya. The geography of the magic city of Alaka is quite mythical.

_The Cloud-Messenger_ contains one hundred and fifteen four-line stanzas, in a majestic metre called the "slow-stepper." The English stanza which has been chosen for the translation gives perhaps as fair a representation of the original movement as may be, where direct imitation is out of the question. Though the stanza of the translation has five lines to four for the slow-stepper, it contains fewer syllables; a constant check on the temptation to padding.

The analysis which accompanies the poem, and which is inserted in Italics at the beginning of each stanza, has more than one object. It saves footnotes; it is intended as a real help to comprehension; and it is an eminently Hindu device. Indeed, it was my first intention to translate literally portions of Mallinatha's famous commentary; and though this did not prove everywhere feasible, there is nothing in the analysis except matter suggested by the commentary.

One minor point calls for notice. The word Himálaya has been accented on the second syllable wherever it occurs. This accent is historically correct, and has some foothold in English usage; besides, it is more euphonious and better adapted to the needs of the metre.

FORMER CLOUD

I

_A Yaksha, or divine attendant on Kubera, god of wealth, is exiled for a year from his home in the Himalayas. As he dwells on a peak in the Vindhya range, half India separates him from his young bride_.

On Rama's shady peak where hermits roam, Mid streams by Sita's bathing sanctified, An erring Yaksha made his hapless home, Doomed by his master humbly to abide, And spend a long, long year of absence from his bride.

II

_After eight months of growing emaciation, the first cloud warns him of the approach of the rainy season, when neglected brides are wont to pine and die_.

Some months were gone; the lonely lover's pain Had loosed his golden bracelet day by day Ere he beheld the harbinger of rain, A cloud that charged the peak in mimic fray, As an elephant attacks a bank of earth in play.

III

Before this cause of lovers' hopes and fears Long time Kubera's bondman sadly bowed In meditation, choking down his tears-- Even happy hearts thrill strangely to the cloud; To him, poor wretch, the loved embrace was disallowed.

IV

_Unable to send tidings otherwise of his health and unchanging love, he resolves to make the cloud his messenger_.

Longing to save his darling's life, unblest With joyous tidings, through the rainy days, He plucked fresh blossoms for his cloudy guest, Such homage as a welcoming comrade pays, And bravely spoke brave words of greeting and of praise.

V

Nor did it pass the lovelorn Yaksha's mind How all unfitly might his message mate With a cloud, mere fire and water, smoke and wind-- Ne'er yet was lover could discriminate 'Twixt life and lifeless things, in his love-blinded state.

VI

_He prefers his request_,

I know, he said, thy far-famed princely line, Thy state, in heaven's imperial council chief, Thy changing forms; to thee, such fate is mine, I come a suppliant in my widowed grief-- Better thy lordly "no" than meaner souls' relief.

VII

O cloud, the parching spirit stirs thy pity; My bride is far, through royal wrath and might; Bring her my message to the Yaksha city, Rich-gardened Alaka, where radiance bright From Shiva's crescent bathes the palaces in light.

VIII

_hinting at the same time that the' cloud will find his kindly labour rewarded by pleasures on the road_,

When thou art risen to airy paths of heaven, Through lifted curls the wanderer's love shall peep And bless the sight of thee for comfort given; Who leaves his bride through cloudy days to weep Except he be like me, whom chains of bondage keep?

IX

_and by happy omens_.

While favouring breezes waft thee gently forth, And while upon thy left the plover sings His proud, sweet song, the cranes who know thy worth Will meet thee in the sky on joyful wings And for delights anticipated join their rings.

X

_He assures the cloud that his bride is neither dead nor faithless_;

Yet hasten, O my brother, till thou see-- Counting the days that bring the lonely smart-- The faithful wife who only lives for me: A drooping flower is woman's loving heart, Upheld by the stem of hope when two true lovers part.

XI

_further, that there will be no lack of travelling companions_.

And when they hear thy welcome thunders break, When mushrooms sprout to greet thy fertile weeks, The swans who long for the Himalayan lake Will be thy comrades to Kailasa's peaks, With juicy bits of lotus-fibre in their beaks.

XII

One last embrace upon this mount bestow Whose flanks were pressed by Rama's holy feet, Who yearly strives his love for thee to show, Warmly his well-beloved friend to greet With the tear of welcome shed when two long-parted meet.

XIII

_He then describes the long journey_,

Learn first, O cloud, the road that thou must go, Then hear my message ere thou speed away; Before thee mountains rise and rivers flow: When thou art weary, on the mountains stay, And when exhausted, drink the rivers' driven spray.

XIV

_beginning with the departure from Rama's peak, where dwells a company of Siddhas, divine beings of extraordinary sanctity_.

Elude the heavenly elephants' clumsy spite; Fly from this peak in richest jungle drest; And Siddha maids who view thy northward flight Will upward gaze in simple terror, lest The wind be carrying quite away the mountain crest.

XV

Bright as a heap of flashing gems, there shines Before thee on the ant-hill, Indra's bow; Matched with that dazzling rainbow's glittering lines, Thy sombre form shall find its beauties grow, Like the dark herdsman Vishnu, with peacock-plumes aglow.

XVI

_The Mala plateau_.

The farmers' wives on Mala's lofty lea, Though innocent of all coquettish art, Will give thee loving glances; for on thee Depends the fragrant furrow's fruitful part; Thence, barely westering, with lightened burden start.

XVII

_The Mango Peak_.

The Mango Peak whose forest fires were laid By streams of thine, will soothe thy weariness; In memory of a former service paid, Even meaner souls spurn not in time of stress A suppliant friend; a soul so lofty, much the less.

XVIII

With ripened mango-fruits his margins teem; And thou, like wetted braids, art blackness quite; When resting on the mountain, thou wilt seem Like the dark nipple on Earth's bosom white, For mating gods and goddesses a thrilling sight.

XIX

_The Reva, or Nerbudda River, foaming against the mountain side_,

His bowers are sweet to forest maidens ever; Do thou upon his crest a moment bide, Then fly, rain-quickened, to the Reva river Which gaily breaks on Vindhya's rocky side, Like painted streaks upon an elephant's dingy hide.

XX

_and flavoured with the ichor which exudes from the temples of elephants during the mating season_.

Refresh thyself from thine exhausted state With ichor-pungent drops that fragrant flow; Thou shalt not then to every wind vibrate-- Empty means ever light, and full means added weight.

XXI

Spying the madder on the banks, half brown, Half green with shoots that struggle to the birth, Nibbling where early plantain-buds hang down, Scenting the sweet, sweet smell of forest earth, The deer will trace thy misty track that ends the dearth.

XXII

Though thou be pledged to ease my darling's pain, Yet I foresee delay on every hill Where jasmines blow, and where the peacock-train Cries forth with joyful tears a welcome shrill; Thy sacrifice is great, but haste thy journey still.

XXIII

_The Dasharna country_,

At thine approach, Dasharna land is blest With hedgerows where gay buds are all aglow, With village trees alive with many a nest Abuilding by the old familiar crow, With lingering swans, with ripe rose-apples' darker show.

XXIV

_and its capital Vidisha, on the banks of Reed River_.

There shalt thou see the royal city, known Afar, and win the lover's fee complete, If thou subdue thy thunders to a tone Of murmurous gentleness, and taste the sweet, Love-rippling features of the river at thy feet.

XXV

A moment rest on Nichais' mountain then, Where madder-bushes don their blossom coat As thrilling to thy touch; where city men O'er youth's unbridled pleasures fondly gloat In caverns whence the perfumes of gay women float.

XXVI

Fly on refreshed; and sprinkle buds that fade On jasmine-vines in gardens wild and rare By forest rivers; and with loving shade Caress the flower-girls' heated faces fair, Whereon the lotuses droop withering from their hair.

XXVII

_The famous old city of Ujjain, the home of the poet, and dearly beloved by him_;

Swerve from thy northern path; for westward rise The palace balconies thou mayst not slight In fair Ujjain; and if bewitching eyes That flutter at thy gleams, should not delight Thine amorous bosom, useless were thy gift of sight.

XXVIII

_and the river, personified as a loving woman, whom the cloud will meet just before he reaches the city_.

The neighbouring mountain stream that gliding grants A glimpse of charms in whirling eddies pursed, While noisy swans accompany her dance Like a tinkling zone, will slake thy loving thirst-- A woman always tells her love in gestures first.

XXIX

Thou only, happy lover! canst repair The desolation that thine absence made: Her shrinking current seems the careless hair That brides deserted wear in single braid, And dead leaves falling give her face a paler shade.

XXX

_The city of Ujjain is fully described_,

Sufficed, though fallen from heaven, to bring down heaven on earth!

XXXI

Where the river-breeze at dawn, with fragrant gain From friendly lotus-blossoms, lengthens out The clear, sweet passion-warbling of the crane, To cure the women's languishing, and flout With a lover's coaxing all their hesitating doubt.

XXXII

Enriched with odours through the windows drifting From perfumed hair, and greeted as a friend By peacock pets their wings in dances lifting, On flower-sweet balconies thy labour end, Where prints of dear pink feet an added glory lend.

XXXIII

_especially its famous shrine to Shiva, called Mahakala_;

Black as the neck of Shiva, very God, Dear therefore to his hosts, thou mayest go To his dread shrine, round which the gardens nod When breezes rich with lotus-pollen blow And ointments that the gaily bathing maidens know.

XXXIV

Reaching that temple at another time, Wait till the sun is lost to human eyes; For if thou mayest play the part sublime Of Shiva's drum at evening sacrifice, Then hast thou in thy thunders grave a priceless prize.

XXXV

The women there, whose girdles long have tinkled In answer to the dance, whose hands yet seize And wave their fans with lustrous gems besprinkled, Will feel thine early drops that soothe and please, And recompense thee from black eyes like clustering bees.

XXXVI

_and the black cloud, painted with twilight red, is bidden to serve as a robe for the god, instead of the bloody elephant hide which he commonly wears in his wild dance_.

Clothing thyself in twilight's rose-red glory, Embrace the dancing Shiva's tree-like arm; He will prefer thee to his mantle gory And spare his grateful goddess-bride's alarm, Whose eager gaze will manifest no fear of harm.

XXXVII

_After one night of repose in the city_

Where women steal to rendezvous by night Through darkness that a needle might divide, Show them the road with lightning-flashes bright As golden streaks upon the touchstone's side-- But rain and thunder not, lest they be terrified.

XXXVIII

On some rich balcony where sleep the doves, Through the dark night with thy beloved stay, The lightning weary with the sport she loves; But with the sunrise journey on thy way-- For they that labour for a friend do not delay.

XXXIX

The gallant dries his mistress' tears that stream When he returns at dawn to her embrace-- Prevent thou not the sun's bright-fingered beam That wipes the tear-dew from the lotus' face; His anger else were great, and great were thy disgrace.

XL

_the cloud is besought to travel to Deep River_.

Thy winsome shadow-soul will surely find An entrance in Deep River's current bright, As thoughts find entrance in a placid mind; Then let no rudeness of thine own affright The darting fish that seem her glances lotus-white.

XLI

But steal her sombre veil of mist away, Although her reeds seem hands that clutch the dress To hide her charms; thou hast no time to stay, Yet who that once has known a dear caress Could bear to leave a woman's unveiled loveliness?

XLII

_Thence to Holy Peak_,

The breeze 'neath which the breathing acre grants New odours, and the forest figs hang sleek, With pleasant whistlings drunk by elephants Through long and hollow trunks, will gently seek To waft thee onward fragrantly to Holy Peak.

XLIII

_the dwelling-place of Skanda, god of war, the child of Shiva and Gauri, concerning whose birth more than one quaint tale is told_.

There change thy form; become a cloud of flowers With heavenly moisture wet, and pay the meed Of praise to Skanda with thy blossom showers; That sun-outshining god is Shiva's seed, Fire-born to save the heavenly hosts in direst need.

XLIV

God Skanda's peacock--he whose eyeballs shine By Shiva's moon, whose flashing fallen plume The god's fond mother wears, a gleaming line Over her ear beside the lotus bloom-- Will dance to thunders echoing in the caverns' room.

XLV

_Thence to Skin River, so called because it flowed forth from a mountain of cattle carcasses, offered in sacrifice by the pious emperor Rantideva_.

Adore the reed-born god and speed away, While Siddhas flee, lest rain should put to shame The lutes which they devoutly love to play; But pause to glorify the stream whose name Recalls the sacrificing emperor's blessed fame.

XLVI

Narrow the river seems from heaven's blue; And gods above, who see her dainty line Matched, when thou drinkest, with thy darker hue, Will think they see a pearly necklace twine Round Earth, with one great sapphire in its midst ashine.

XLVII

_The province of the Ten Cities_.

Beyond, the province of Ten Cities lies Whose women, charming with their glances rash, Will view thine image with bright, eager eyes, Dark eyes that dance beneath the lifted lash, As when black bees round nodding jasmine-blossoms flash.

XLVIII

_The Hallowed Land, where were fought the awful battles of the ancient epic time_.

Then veil the Hallowed Land in cloudy shade; Visit the field where to this very hour Lie bones that sank beneath the soldier's blade, Where Arjuna discharged his arrowy shower On men, as thou thy rain-jets on the lotus-flower.

XLIX

_In these battles, the hero Balarama, whose weapon was a plough-share, would take no part, because kinsmen of his were fighting in each army. He preferred to spend the time in drinking from the holy river Sarasvati, though little accustomed to any other drink than wine_.

Sweet friend, drink where those holy waters shine Which the plough-bearing hero--loath to fight His kinsmen--rather drank than sweetest wine With a loving bride's reflected eyes alight; Then, though thy form be black, thine inner soul is bright.

L

_The Ganges River, which originates in heaven. Its fall is broken by the head of Shiva, who stands on the Himalaya Mountains; otherwise the shock would be too great for the earth. But Shiva's goddess-bride is displeased_.

Fly then where Ganges o'er the king of mountains Falls like a flight of stairs from heaven let down For the sons of men; she hurls her billowy fountains Like hands to grasp the moon on Shiva's crown And laughs her foamy laugh at Gauri's jealous frown.

LI

_The dark cloud is permitted to mingle with the clear stream of Ganges, as the muddy Jumna River does near the city now called Allahabad_.

If thou, like some great elephant of the sky, Shouldst wish from heaven's eminence to bend And taste the crystal stream, her beauties high-- As thy dark shadows with her whiteness blend-- Would be what Jumna's waters at Prayaga lend.

LII

_The magnificent Himalaya range_.

Her birth-place is Himalaya's rocky crest Whereon the scent of musk is never lost, For deer rest ever there where thou wilt rest Sombre against the peak with whiteness glossed, Like dark earth by the snow-white bull of Shiva tossed.

LIII

If, born from friction of the deodars, A scudding fire should prove the mountain's bane, Singeing the tails of yaks with fiery stars, Quench thou the flame with countless streams of rain-- The great have power that they may soothe distress and pain.

LIV

If mountain monsters should assail thy path With angry leaps that of their object fail, Only to hurt themselves in helpless wrath, Scatter the creatures with thy pelting hail-- For who is not despised that strives without avail?

LV

Bend lowly down and move in reverent state Round Shiva's foot-print on the rocky plate With offerings laden by the saintly great; The sight means heaven as their eternal fate When death and sin are past, for them that faithful wait.

LVI

The breeze is piping on the bamboo-tree; And choirs of heaven sing in union sweet O'er demon foe of Shiva's victory; If thunders in the caverns drumlike beat, Then surely Shiva's symphony will be complete.

LVII

_The mountain pass called the Swan-gate_.

Pass by the wonders of the snowy slope; Through the Swan-gate, through mountain masses rent To make his fame a path by Bhrigu's hope In long, dark beauty fly, still northward bent, Like Vishnu's foot, when he sought the demon's chastisement.

LVIII

_And at Mount Kailasa, the long journey is ended_;

Seek then Kailasa's hospitable care, With peaks by magic arms asunder riven, To whom, as mirror, goddesses repair, So lotus-bright his summits cloud the heaven, Like form and substance to God's daily laughter given.

LIX

Like powder black and soft I seem to see Thine outline on the mountain slope as bright As new-sawn tusks of stainless ivory; No eye could wink before as fair a sight As dark-blue robes upon the Ploughman's shoulder white.

LX

Should Shiva throw his serpent-ring aside And give Gauri his hand, go thou before Upon the mount of joy to be their guide; Conceal within thee all thy watery store And seem a terraced stairway to the jewelled floor.

LXI

I doubt not that celestial maidens sweet With pointed bracelet gems will prick thee there To make of thee a shower-bath in the heat; Frighten the playful girls if they should dare To keep thee longer, friend, with thunder's harshest blare.

LXII

Drink where the golden lotus dots the lake; Serve Indra's elephant as a veil to hide His drinking; then the tree of wishing shake, Whose branches like silk garments flutter wide: With sports like these, O cloud, enjoy the mountain side.

LXIII

_for on this mountain is the city of the Yakshas_.

Then, in familiar Alaka find rest, Down whom the Ganges' silken river swirls, Whose towers cling to her mountain lover's breast, While clouds adorn her face like glossy curls And streams of rain like strings of close-inwoven pearls.

LATTER CLOUD

I

_The splendid heavenly city Alaka_,

Where palaces in much may rival thee-- Their ladies gay, thy lightning's dazzling powers-- Symphonic drums, thy thunder's melody-- Their bright mosaic floors, thy silver showers-- Thy rainbow, paintings, and thy height, cloud-licking towers.

II

_where the flowers which on earth blossom at different seasons, are all found in bloom the year round_.

Where the autumn lotus in dear fingers shines, And lodh-flowers' April dust on faces rare, Spring amaranth with winter jasmine twines In women's braids, and summer siris fair, The rainy madder in the parting of their hair.

III

_Here grows the magic tree which yields whatever is desired_.

Where men with maids whose charm no blemish mars Climb to the open crystal balcony Inlaid with flower-like sparkling of the stars, And drink the love-wine from the wishing-tree, And listen to the drums' deep-thundering dignity.

IV

Where maidens whom the gods would gladly wed Are fanned by breezes cool with Ganges' spray In shadows that the trees of heaven spread; In golden sands at hunt-the-pearl they play, Bury their little fists, and draw them void away.

V

Where lovers' passion-trembling fingers cling To silken robes whose sashes flutter wide, The knots undone; and red-lipped women fling, Silly with shame, their rouge from side to side. Hoping in vain the flash of jewelled lamps to hide.

VI

Where, brought to balconies' palatial tops By ever-blowing guides, were clouds before Like thee who spotted paintings with their drops; Then, touched with guilty fear, were seen no more, But scattered smoke-like through the lattice' grated door.

VII

_Here are the stones from which drops of water ooze when the moon shines on them_.

Where from the moonstones hung in nets of thread Great drops of water trickle in the night-- When the moon shines clear and thou, O cloud, art fled-- To ease the languors of the women's plight Who lie relaxed and tired in love's embraces tight.

VIII

_Here are the magic gardens of heaven_.

Where lovers, rich with hidden wealth untold, Wander each day with nymphs for ever young, Enjoy the wonders that the gardens hold, The Shining Gardens, where the praise is sung Of the god of wealth by choirs with love-impassioned tongue.

IX

Where sweet nocturnal journeys are betrayed At sunrise by the fallen flowers from curls That fluttered as they stole along afraid, By leaves, by golden lotuses, by pearls, By broken necklaces that slipped from winsome girls.

X

_Here the god of love is not seen, because of the presence of his great enemy, Shiva. Yet his absence is not severely felt_.

Where the god of love neglects his bee-strung bow, Since Shiva's friendship decks Kubera's reign; His task is done by clever maids, for lo! Their frowning missile glances, darting plain At lover-targets, never pass the mark in vain.

XI

_Here the goddesses have all needful ornaments. For the Mine of Sentiment declares: "Women everywhere have four kinds of ornaments--hair-ornaments, jewels, clothes, cosmetics; anything else is local_."

Where the wishing-tree yields all that might enhance The loveliness of maidens young and sweet: Bright garments, wine that teaches eyes to dance, And flowering twigs, and rarest gems discrete, And lac-dye fit to stain their pretty lotus-feet.

XII

_And here is the home of the unhappy Yaksha_,

There, northward from the master's palace, see Our home, whose rainbow-gateway shines afar; And near it grows a little coral-tree, Bending 'neath many a blossom's clustered star, Loved by my bride as children of adoption are.

XIII

_with its artificial pool_;

A pool is near, to which an emerald stair Leads down, with blooming lotuses of gold Whose stalks are polished beryl; resting there, The wistful swans are glad when they behold Thine image, and forget the lake they loved of old.

XIV

_its hill of sport, girdled by bright hedges, like the dark cloud girdled by the lightening_;

And on the bank, a sapphire-crested hill Round which the golden plantain-hedges fit; She loves the spot; and while I marvel still At thee, my friend, as flashing lightnings flit About thine edge, with restless rapture I remember it.

XV

_its two favourite trees, which will not blossom while their mistress is grieving_;

The ashoka-tree, with sweetly dancing lines, The favourite bakul-tree, are near the bower Of amaranth-engirdled jasmine-vines; Like me, they wait to feel the winning power Of her persuasion, ere they blossom into flower.

XVI

_its tame peacock_;

A golden pole is set between the pair, With crystal perch above its emerald bands As green as young bamboo; at sunset there Thy friend, the blue-necked peacock, rises, stands, And dances when she claps her bracelet-tinkling hands.

XVII

_and its painted emblems of the god of wealth_.

These are the signs--recall them o'er and o'er, My clever friend--by which the house is known, And the Conch and Lotus painted by the door: Alas! when I am far, the charm is gone-- The lotus' loveliness is lost with set of sun.

XVIII

Small as the elephant cub thou must become For easy entrance; rest where gems enhance The glory of the hill beside my home, And peep into the house with lightning-glance, But make its brightness dim as fireflies' twinkling dance.

XIX

_The Yaksha's bride_.

The supremest woman from God's workshop gone-- Young, slender; little teeth and red, red lips, Slight waist and gentle eyes of timid fawn, An idly graceful movement, generous hips, Fair bosom into which the sloping shoulder slips--

XX

Like a bird that mourns her absent mate anew Passing these heavy days in longings keen, My girlish wife whose words are sweet and few, My second life, shall there of thee be seen-- But changed like winter-blighted lotus-blooms, I ween.

XXI

Her eyes are swol'n with tears that stream unchidden; Her lips turn pale with sorrow's burning sighs; The face that rests upon her hand is hidden By hanging curls, as when the glory dies Of the suffering moon pursued by thee through nightly skies.

XXII

_The passion of love passes through ten stages, eight of which are suggested in this stanza and the stanzas which follow. The first stage is not indicated; it is called Exchange of Glances_.

Thou first wilt see her when she seeks relief In worship; or, half fancying, half recalling, She draws mine image worn by absent grief; Or asks the caged, sweetly-singing starling: "Do you remember, dear, our lord? You were his darling."

XXIII

_In this stanza and the preceding one is suggested the second stage: Wistfulness_.

Or holds a lute on her neglected skirt, And tries to sing of me, and tries in vain; For she dries the tear-wet string with hands inert, And e'er begins, and e'er forgets again, Though she herself composed it once, the loving strain.

XXIV

_Here is suggested the third stage: Desire_.

Or counts the months of absence yet remaining With flowers laid near the threshold on the floor, Or tastes the bliss of hours when love was gaining The memories recollected o'er and o'er-- woman's comforts when her lonely heart is sore.

XXV

_Here is suggested the fourth stage: Wakefulness_.

Such daytime labours doubtless ease the ache Which doubly hurts her in the helpless dark; With news from me a keener joy to wake, Stand by her window in the night, and mark My sleepless darling on her pallet hard and stark.

XXVI

_Here is suggested the fifth stage: Emaciation_.

Resting one side upon that widowed bed, Like the slender moon upon the Eastern height, So slender she, now worn with anguish dread, Passing with stifling tears the long, sad night Which, spent in love with me, seemed but a moment's flight.

XXVII

_Here is suggested the sixth stage: Loss of Interest in Ordinary Pleasures_.

On the cool, sweet moon that through the lattice flashes She looks with the old delight, then turns away And veils her eyes with water-weighted lashes, Sad as the flower that blooms in sunlight gay, But cannot wake nor slumber on a cloudy day.

XXVIII

_Here is suggested the seventh stage: Loss of Youthful Bashfulness_.

One unanointed curl still frets her cheek When tossed by sighs that burn her blossom-lip; And still she yearns, and still her yearnings seek That we might be united though in sleep-- Ah! Happy dreams come not to brides that ever weep.

XXIX

_Here is suggested the eighth stage: Absent-mindedness. For if she were not absent-minded, she would arrange the braid so as not to be annoyed by it_.

Her single tight-bound braid she pushes oft-- With a hand uncared for in her lonely madness-- So rough it seems, from the cheek that is so soft: That braid ungarlanded since the first day's sadness, Which I shall loose again when troubles end in gladness.

XXX

_Here is suggested the ninth stage: Prostration. The tenth stage, Death, is not suggested_.

The delicate body, weak and suffering, Quite unadorned and tossing to and fro In oft-renewing wretchedness, will wring Even from thee a raindrop-tear, I know-- Soft breasts like thine are pitiful to others' woe.

XXXI

I know her bosom full of love for me, And therefore fancy how her soul doth grieve In this our first divorce; it cannot be Self-flattery that idle boastings weave-- Soon shalt thou see it all, and seeing, shalt believe.

XXXII

_Quivering of the eyelids_

Her hanging hair prevents the twinkling shine Of fawn-eyes that forget their glances sly, Lost to the friendly aid of rouge and wine-- Yet the eyelids quiver when thou drawest nigh As water-lilies do when fish go scurrying by.

XXXIII

_and trembling of the limbs are omens of speedy union with the beloved_.

And limbs that thrill to thee thy welcome prove, Limbs fair as stems in some rich plantain-bower, No longer showing marks of my rough love, Robbed of their cooling pearls by fatal power, The limbs which I was wont to soothe in passion's hour.

XXXIV

But if she should be lost in happy sleep, Wait, bear with her, grant her but three hours' grace, And thunder not, O cloud, but let her keep The dreaming vision of her lover's face-- Loose not too soon the imagined knot of that embrace.

XXXV

As thou wouldst wake the jasmine's budding wonder, Wake her with breezes blowing mistily; Conceal thy lightnings, and with words of thunder Speak boldly, though she answer haughtily With eyes that fasten on the lattice and on thee.

XXXVI

_The cloud is instructed how to announce himself_

"Thou art no widow; for thy husband's friend Is come to tell thee what himself did say-- A cloud with low, sweet thunder-tones that send All weary wanderers hastening on their way, Eager to loose the braids of wives that lonely stay."

XXXVII

_in such a way as to win the favour of his auditor_.

Say this, and she will welcome thee indeed, Sweet friend, with a yearning heart's tumultuous beating And joy-uplifted eyes; and she will heed The after message: such a friendly greeting Is hardly less to woman's heart than lovers' meeting.

XXXVIII

_The message itself_.

Thus too, my king, I pray of thee to speak, Remembering kindness is its own reward; "Thy lover lives, and from the holy peak Asks if these absent days good health afford-- Those born to pain must ever use this opening word.

XXXIX

With body worn as thine, with pain as deep, With tears and ceaseless longings answering thine, With sighs more burning than the sighs that keep Thy lips ascorch--doomed far from thee to pine, He too doth weave the fancies that thy soul entwine.

XL

He used to love, when women friends were near, To whisper things he might have said aloud That he might touch thy face and kiss thine ear; Unheard and even unseen, no longer proud, He now must send this yearning message by a cloud.

XLI

_According to the treatise called "Virtues Banner," a lover has four solaces in separation: first, looking at objects that remind him of her he loves_;

'I see thy limbs in graceful-creeping vines, Thy glances in the eyes of gentle deer, Thine eyebrows in the ripple's dancing lines, Thy locks in plumes, thy face in moonlight clear-- Ah, jealous! But the whole sweet image is not here.

XLII

_second, painting a picture of her_;

And when I paint that loving jealousy With chalk upon the rock, and my caress As at thy feet I lie, I cannot see Through tears that to mine eyes unbidden press-- So stern a fate denies a painted happiness.

XLIII

_third, dreaming of her_;

And when I toss mine arms to clasp thee tight, Mine own though but in visions of a dream-- They who behold the oft-repeated sight, The kind divinities of wood and stream, Let fall great pearly tears that on the blossoms gleam.

XLIV

_fourth, touching something which she has touched_.

Himalaya's breeze blows gently from the north, Unsheathing twigs upon the deodar And sweet with sap that it entices forth-- I embrace it lovingly; it came so far, Perhaps it touched thee first, my life's unchanging star!

XLV

Oh, might the long, long night seem short to me! Oh, might the day his hourly tortures hide! Such longings for the things that cannot be, Consume my helpless heart, sweet-glancing bride, In burning agonies of absence from thy side.

XLVI

_The bride is besought not to lose heart at hearing of her lover's wretchedness_,

Yet much reflection, dearest, makes me strong, Strong with an inner strength; nor shouldst thou feel Despair at what has come to us of wrong; Who has unending woe or lasting weal? Our fates move up and down upon a circling wheel.

XLVII

_and to remember that the curse has its appointed end, when the rainy season is over and the year of exile fulfilled. Vishnu spends the rainy months in sleep upon the back of the cosmic serpent Shesha_.

When Vishnu rises from his serpent bed The curse is ended; close thine eyelids tight And wait till only four months more are sped; Then we shall taste each long-desired delight Through nights that the full autumn moon illumines bright.

XLVIII

_Then is added a secret which, as it could not possibly be known to a third person, assures her that the cloud is a true messenger_.

And one thing more: thou layest once asleep, Clasping my neck, then wakening with a scream; And when I wondered why, thou couldst but weep A while, and then a smile began to beam: "Rogue! Rogue! I saw thee with another girl in dream."

XLIX

This memory shows me cheerful, gentle wife; Then let no gossip thy suspicions move: They say the affections strangely forfeit life In separation, but in truth they prove Toward the absent dear, a growing bulk of tenderest love.'"

L

_The Yaksha then begs the cloud to return with a message of comfort_.

Console her patient heart, to breaking full In our first separation; having spoken, Fly from the mountain ploughed by Shiva's bull; Make strong with message and with tender token My life, so easily, like morning jasmines, broken.

LI

I hope, sweet friend, thou grantest all my suit, Nor read refusal in thy solemn air; When thirsty birds complain, thou givest mute The rain from heaven: such simple hearts are rare, Whose only answer is fulfilment of the prayer.

LII

_and dismisses him, with a prayer for his welfare_.

Thus, though I pray unworthy, answer me For friendship's sake, or pity's, magnified By the sight of my distress; then wander free In rainy loveliness, and ne'er abide One moment's separation from thy lightning bride.

* * * * *

THE SEASONS

_The Seasons_ is an unpretentious poem, describing in six short cantos the six seasons into which the Hindus divide the year. The title is perhaps a little misleading, as the description is not objective, but deals with the feelings awakened by each season in a pair of young lovers. Indeed, the poem might be called a Lover's Calendar. Kalidasa's authorship has been doubted, without very cogent argument. The question is not of much interest, as _The Seasons_ would neither add greatly to his reputation nor subtract from it.

The whole poem contains one hundred and forty-four stanzas, or something less than six hundred lines of verse. There follow a few stanzas selected from each canto.

SUMMER

Pitiless heat from heaven pours By day, but nights are cool; Continual bathing gently lowers The water in the pool; The evening brings a charming peace: For summer-time is here When love that never knows surcease, Is less imperious, dear.

Yet love can never fall asleep; For he is waked to-day By songs that all their sweetness keep And lutes that softly play, By fans with sandal-water wet That bring us drowsy rest, By strings of pearls that gently fret Full many a lovely breast.

The sunbeams like the fires are hot That on the altar wake; The enmity is quite forgot Of peacock and of snake; The peacock spares his ancient foe, For pluck and hunger fail; He hides his burning head below The shadow of his tail.

Beneath the garland of the rays That leave no corner cool, The water vanishes in haze And leaves a muddy pool; The cobra does not hunt for food Nor heed the frog at all Who finds beneath the serpent's hood A sheltering parasol.

Dear maiden of the graceful song, To you may summer's power Bring moonbeams clear and garlands long And breath of trumpet-flower, Bring lakes that countless lilies dot, Refreshing water-sprays, Sweet friends at evening, and a spot Cool after burning days.

THE RAINS

The rain advances like a king In awful majesty; Hear, dearest, how his thunders ring Like royal drums, and see His lightning-banners wave; a cloud For elephant he rides, And finds his welcome from the crowd Of lovers and of brides.

The clouds, a mighty army, march With drumlike thundering And stretch upon the rainbow's arch The lightning's flashing string; The cruel arrows of the rain Smite them who love, apart From whom they love, with stinging pain, And pierce them to the heart.

The forest seems to show its glee In flowering nipa plants; In waving twigs of many a tree Wind-swept, it seems to dance; Its ketak-blossom's opening sheath Is like a smile put on To greet the rain's reviving breath, Now pain and heat are gone.

To you, dear, may the cloudy time Bring all that you desire, Bring every pleasure, perfect, prime, To set a bride on fire; May rain whereby life wakes and shines Where there is power of life, The unchanging friend of clinging vines, Shower blessings on my wife.

AUTUMN

The autumn comes, a maiden fair In slenderness and grace, With nodding rice-stems in her hair And lilies in her face. In flowers of grasses she is clad; And as she moves along, Birds greet her with their cooing glad Like bracelets' tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night Of multitudinous stars; Her silken robe is white moonlight, Set free from cloudy bars; And on her face (the radiant moon) Bewitching smiles are shown: She seems a slender maid, who soon Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants Are shivering to the breeze; While in his brisk caresses dance The blossom-burdened trees; He ruffles every lily-pond Where blossoms kiss and part, And stirs with lover's fancies fond The young man's eager heart.

WINTER

The bloom of tenderer flowers is past And lilies droop forlorn, For winter-time is come at last, Rich with its ripened corn; Yet for the wealth of blossoms lost Some hardier flowers appear That bid defiance to the frost Of sterner days, my dear.

The vines, remembering summer, shiver In frosty winds, and gain A fuller life from mere endeavour To live through all that pain; Yet in the struggle and acquist They turn as pale and wan As lonely women who have missed Known love, now lost and gone.

Then may these winter days show forth To you each known delight, Bring all that women count as worth Pure happiness and bright; While villages, with bustling cry, Bring home the ripened corn, And herons wheel through wintry sky, Forget sad thoughts forlorn.

EARLY SPRING

Now, dearest, lend a heedful ear And listen while I sing Delights to every maiden dear, The charms of early spring: When earth is dotted with the heaps Of corn, when heron-scream Is rare but sweet, when passion leaps And paints a livelier dream.

When all must cheerfully applaud A blazing open fire; Or if they needs must go abroad, The sun is their desire; When everybody hopes to find The frosty chill allayed By garments warm, a window-blind Shut, and a sweet young maid.

Then may the days of early spring For you be rich and full With love's proud, soft philandering And many a candy-pull, With sweetest rice and sugar-cane: And may you float above The absent grieving and the pain Of separated love.

SPRING

A stalwart soldier comes, the spring, Who bears the bow of Love; And on that bow, the lustrous string Is made of bees, that move With malice as they speed the shaft Of blossoming mango-flower At us, dear, who have never laughed At love, nor scorned his power.

Their blossom-burden weights the trees; The winds in fragrance move; The lakes are bright with lotuses, The women bright with love; The days are soft, the evenings clear And charming; everything That moves and lives and blossoms, dear, Is sweeter in the spring.

The groves are beautifully bright For many and many a mile With jasmine-flowers that are as white As loving woman's smile: The resolution of a saint Might well be tried by this; Far more, young hearts that fancies paint With dreams of loving bliss.

* * * * *

EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

By Ernest Rhys

MADE AT THE TEMPLE

PRESS LETCHWORTH IN GREAT BRITAIN

Victor Hugo said a Library was "an act of faith," and some unknown essayist spoke of one so beautiful, so perfect, so harmonious in all its parts, that he who made it was smitten with a passion. In that faith the promoters of Everyman's Library planned it out originally on a large scale; and their idea in so doing was to make it conform as far as possible to a perfect scheme. However, perfection is a thing to be aimed at and not to be achieved in this difficult world; and since the first volumes appeared, now several years ago, there have been many interruptions. A great war has come and gone; and even the City of Books has felt something like a world commotion. Only in recent years is the series getting back into its old stride and looking forward to complete its original scheme of a Thousand Volumes. One of the practical expedients in that original plan was to divide the volumes into sections, as Biography, Fiction, History, Belles Lettres, Poetry, Romance, and so forth; with a compartment for young people, and last, and not least, one of Reference Books. Beside the dictionaries and encyclopædias to be expected in that section, there was a special set of literary and historical atlases. One of these atlases dealing with Europe, we may recall, was directly affected by the disturbance of frontiers during the war; and the maps had to be completely revised in consequence, so as to chart the New Europe which we hope will now preserve its peace under the auspices of the League of Nations set up at Geneva. That is only one small item, however, in a library list which runs already to the final centuries of the Thousand. The largest slice of this huge provision is, as a matter of course, given to the tyrannous demands of fiction. But in carrying out the scheme, publishers and editors contrived to keep in mind that books, like men and women, have their elective affinities. The present volume, for instance, will be found to have its companion books, both in the same section and even more significantly in other sections. With that idea too, novels like Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_ and _Fortunes of Nigel_, Lytton's _Harold_ and Dickens's _Tale of Two Cities_, have been used as pioneers of history and treated as a sort of holiday history books. For in our day history is tending to grow more documentary and less literary; and "the historian who is a stylist," as one of our contributors, the late Thomas Seccombe, said, "will soon be regarded as a kind of Phoenix." But in this special department of Everyman's Library we have been eclectic enough to choose our history men from every school in turn. We have Grote, Gibbon, Finlay, Macaulay, Motley, Frescott. We have among earlier books the Venerable Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, have completed a Livy in an admirable new translation by Canon Roberts, while Cæsar, Tacitus, Thucydides and Herodotus are not forgotten. "You only, O Books," said Richard de Bury, "are liberal and independent; you give to all who ask." The delightful variety, the wisdom and the wit which are at the disposal of Everyman in his own library may well, at times, seem to him a little embarrassing. He may turn to Dick Steele in _The Spectator_ and learn how Cleomira dances, when the elegance of her motion is unimaginable and "her eyes are chastised with the simplicity and innocence of her thoughts." He may turn to Plato's Phædrus and read how every soul is divided into three parts (like Cæsar's Gaul). He may turn to the finest critic of Victorian times, Matthew Arnold, and find in his essay on Maurice de Guerin the perfect key to what is there called the "magical power of poetry." It is Shakespeare, with his

"daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty;"

it is Wordsworth, with his

"voice ... heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides;"

or Keats, with his

".... moving waters at their priest-like task Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores."

William Hazlitt's "Table Talk," among the volumes of Essays, may help to show the relationship of one author to another, which is another form of the Friendship of Books. His incomparable essay in that volume, "On Going a Journey," forms a capital prelude to Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria" and to his and Wordsworth's poems. In the same way one may turn to the review of Moore's Life of Byron in Macaulay's _Essays_ as a prelude to the three volumes of Byron's own poems, remembering that the poet whom Europe loved more than England did was as Macaulay said: "the beginning, the middle and the end of all his own poetry." This brings us to the provoking reflection that it is the obvious authors and the books most easy to reprint which have been the signal successes out of the many hundreds in the series, for Everyman is distinctly proverbial in his tastes. He likes best of all an old author who has worn well or a comparatively new author who has gained something like newspaper notoriety. In attempting to lead him on from the good books that are known to those that are less known, the publishers may have at times been too adventurous. The late _Chief_ himself was much more than an ordinary book-producer in this critical enterprise. He threw himself into it with the zeal of a book-lover and indeed of one who, like Milton, thought that books might be as alive and productive as dragons' teeth, which, being "sown up and down the land, might chance to spring up armed men." Mr. Pepys in his _Diary_ writes about some of his books, "which are come home gilt on the backs, very handsome to the eye." The pleasure he took in them is that which Everyman may take in the gilt backs of his favourite books in his own Library, which after all he has helped to make good and lasting.

* * * * *

Abbott's Rollo at Work, etc., 275

Addison's Spectator, 164-167

Æschylus' Lyrical Dramas, 62

Æsop's and Other Fables, 657

Aimard's The Indian Scout, 428

Ainsworth's Tower of London, 400 " Old St. Paul's, 522 " Windsor Castle, 709 " The Admirable Crichton, 804

A'Kempis' Imitation of Christ, 484

Alcott's Little Women, and Good Wives, 248 " Little Men, 512

Alpine Club. Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, 778

Andersen's Fairy Tales, 4

Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 794

Anson's Voyages, 510

Aristophanes' The Acharnians, etc., 344 " The Frogs, etc., 516

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, 547 " Politics, 605

Arnold's (Matthew) Essays, 115 " Poems, 334 " Study of Celtic Literature, etc., 458

Augustine's (Saint) Confessions, 200

Aurelius' (Marcus) Golden Book, 9

Austen's (Jane) Sense and Sensibility, 21 " Pride and Prejudice, 22 " Mansfield Park, 23 " Emma, 24 " Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, 25

Bacon's Essays, 10 " Advancement of Learning, 719

Bagehot's Literary Studies, 520, 521

Baker's (Sir S.W.) Cast up by the Sea, 539

Ballantyne's Coral Island, 245 " Martin Rattler, 246 " Ungava, 276

Balzac's Wild Ass's Skin, 26 " Eugénie Grandet, 169 " Old Goriot, 170 " Atheist's Mass, etc., 229 " Christ in Flanders, etc., 284 " The Chouans, 285 " Quest of the Absolute, 286 " Cat and Racket, etc., 349 " Catherine de Medici, 419 " Cousin Pons, 463 " The Country Doctor, 530 " Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, 596 " Lost Illusions, 656 " The Country Parson, 686 " Ursule Mirouët, 733

Barbusse's Under Fire, 798

Barca's (Mme. C. de la) Life in Mexico, 664

Bates' Naturalist on the Amazons, 446

Beaumont and Fletcher's Select Plays, 506

Beaumont's (Mary) Joan Seaton, 597

Bede's Ecclesiastical History, etc., 479

Belt's The Naturalist in Nicaragua, 561

Berkeley's (Bishop) Principles of Human Knowledge, New Theory of Vision, etc., 483

Berlioz (Hector), Life of, 602

Binns' Life of Abraham Lincoln, 783

Björnson's Plays, 625, 696

Blackmore's Lorna Doone, 304 " Springhaven, 350

Blackwell's Pioneer Work for Women, 667

Blake's Poems and Prophecies, 792

Boehme's The Signature of All Things, etc., 569

Bonaventura's The Little Flowers, The Life of St. Francis, etc., 485

Borrow's Wild Wales, 49 " Lavengro, 119 " Romany Rye, 120 " Bible in Spain, 151 " Gypsies in Spain, 697

Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1, 2 " Tour in the Hebrides, etc., 387

Boult's Asgard and Norse Heroes, 689

Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist, 559

Bright's (John) Speeches, 252

Brontë's (A.) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 685

Brontë's (C.) Jane Eyre, 287 " Shirley, 288 " Villette, 351 " The Professor, 417

Brontë's (E.) Wuthering Heights, 243

Brooke's (Stopford A.) Theology in the English Poets, 493

Brown's (Dr. John) Rab and His Friends, etc., 116

Browne's (Frances) Grannie's Wonderful Chair, 112

Browne's (Sir Thos.) Religio Medici, etc., 92

Browning's Poems, 1833-1844, 41 " " 1844-1864, 42 " The Ring and the Book, 502

Buchanan's Life and Adventures of Audubon, 601

Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, 472 " Legends of Charlemagne, 556

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 204

Burke's American Speeches and Letters, 340 " Reflections on the French Revolution, etc., 460

Burnet's History of His Own Times, 85

Burney's Evelina, 352

Burns' Poems and Songs, 94

Burrell's Volume of Heroic Verse, 574

Burton's East Africa, 500

Butler's Analogy of Religion, 90

Buxton's Memoirs, 773

Byron's Complete Poetical and Dramatic Works, 486-488

Cæsar's Gallic War, etc., 702

Canton's Child's Book of Saints, 61 " Invisible Playmate, etc., 566

Carlyle's French Revolution, 31, 32 " Letters, etc., of Cromwell, 266-268 " Sartor Resartus, 278 " Past and Present, 608 " Essays, 703, 704

Cellini's Autobiography, 51

Cervantes' Don Quixote, 385, 386

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 307

Chrétien de Troyes' Eric and Enid, 698

Cibber's Apology for his Life, 668

Cicero's Select Letters and Orations, 345

Clarke's Tales from Chaucer, 537 " Shakespeare's Heroines, 109-111

Cobbett's Rural Rides, 638, 639

Coleridge's Biographia, 11 " Golden Book, 43 " Lectures on Shakespeare, 162

Collins' Woman in White, 464

Collodi's Pinocchio, 538

Converse's Long Will, 328

Cook's Voyages, 99

Cooper's The Deerslayer, 77 " The Pathfinder, 78 " Last of the Mohicans, 79 " The Pioneer, 171 " The Prairie, 172

Cousin's Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 449

Cowper's Letters, 774

Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece, 721

Craik's Manual of English Literature, 346

Craik (Mrs.). _See_ Mulock.

Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles, 300

Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, 640

Curtis's Prue and I, and Lotus, 418

Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, 588

Dante's Divine Comedy, 308

Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, 104

Dasent's The Story of Burnt Njal, 558

Daudet's Tartarin of Tarascon, 423

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 59 " Captain Singleton, 74 " Memoirs of a Cavalier, 283 " Journal of Plague, 289

De Joinville's Memoirs of the Crusades, 333

Demosthenes' Select Orations, 546

Dennis' Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 183, 184

De Quincey's Lake Poets, 163 " Opium-Eater, 223 " English Mail Coach, etc., 609

De Retz (Cardinal), Memoirs of, 735, 736

Descartes' Discourse on Method, 570

Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, 76 " Tale of Two Cities, 102 " Old Curiosity Shop, 173 " Oliver Twist, 233 " Great Expectations, 234 " Pickwick Papers, 235 " Bleak House, 236 " Sketches by Boz, 237 " Nicholas Nickleby, 238 " Christmas Books, 239 " Dombey & Son, 240 " Martin Chuzzlewit, 241 " David Copperfield, 242 " American Notes, 290 " Child's History of England, 291 " Hard Times, 292 " Little Dorrit, 293 " Our Mutual Friend, 294 " Christmas Stories, 414 " Uncommercial Traveller, 536 " Edwin Drood, 725 " Reprinted Pieces, 744

Disraeli's Coningsby, 635

Dixon's Fairy Tales from Arabian Nights, 249

Dodge's Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, 620

Dostoieffsky's Crime and Punishment, 501 " The House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia, 533 " Letters from the Underworld, etc., 654 " The Idiot, 682 " Poor Folk, and The Gambler, 711 " The Brothers Karamazov, 802, 803

Dowden's Life of R. Browning, 701

Dryden's Dramatic Essays, 568

Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, 499

Dumas' The Three Musketeers, 81 " The Black Tulip, 174

Dumas' Twenty Years After, 175 " Marguerite de Valois, 326 " The Count of Monte Cristo, 393, 394 " The Forty-Five, 420 " Chicot the Jester, 421 " Vicomte de Bragelonne, 593-595 " Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, 614

Duruy's History of France, 737, 738

Edgar's Cressy and Poictiers, 17 " Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 320 " Heroes of England, 471

Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, etc., 410

Edwardes' Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632

Eliot's Adam Bede, 27 " Silas Marner, 121 " Romola, 231 " Mill on the Floss, 325 " Felix Holt, 353 " Scenes of Clerical Life, 468

Elyot's Governour, 227

Emerson's Essays, 12 " Representative Men, 279 " Nature, Conduct of Life, etc., 322 " Society and Solitude, etc., 567 " Poems, 715

Epictetus' Moral Discourses, etc., 404

Erckmann--Chatrian's The Conscript and Waterloo, 354 " Story of a Peasant, 706, 707

Euripides' Plays, 63, 271

Evelyn's Diary, 220, 221

Ewing's (Mrs.) Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances, and other Stories, 730 " Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life, 731

Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, 576

Fielding's Tom Jones, 355, 356 " Joseph Andrews, 467

Finlay's Byzantine Empire, 33 " Greece under the Romans, 185

Fletcher's (Beaumont and) Select Plays, 506

Ford's Gatherings from Spain, 152

Forster's Life of Dickens, 781, 782

Fox's Journal, 754

Fox's Selected Speeches, 759

Franklin's Journey to Polar Sea, 447

Freeman's Old English History for Children, 540

Froissart's Chronicles, 57

Fronde's Short Studies, 13, 705 " Henry VIII., 372-374 " Edward VI., 375 " Mary Tudor, 477 " History of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, 583-587 " Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 666

Gait's Annals of the Parish, 427

Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty, 263

Gaskell's Cranford, 83 " Charlotte Brontë, 318 " Sylvia's Lovers, 524 " Mary Barton, 598 " Cousin Phillis, etc., 615 " North and South, 680

Gatty's Parables from Nature, 158

Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histories of the Kings of Britain, 577

George's Progress and Poverty, 560

Gibbon's Roman Empire, 434-436, 474-476 " Autobiography, 511

Gilfillian's Literary Portraits, 348

Giraldus Cambrensis, 272

Gleig's Life of Wellington, 341 " The Subaltern, 708

Goethe's Faust (Parts I. and II.), 335 " Wilhelm Meister, 599, 600

Gogol's Dead Souls, 726 " Taras Bulba, 740

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, 295 " Poems and Plays, 415

Gorki's Through Russia, 741

Gosse's Restoration Plays, 604

Gotthelf's Ulric the Farm Servant, 228

Gray's Poems and Letters, 628

Green's Short History of the English People, 727, 728 The cloth edition is in 2 vols. or 1 vol. All other editions are in 1 vol.

Grimms' Fairy Tales, 56

Grote's History of Greece, 186-197

Guest's (Lady) Mabinogion, 97

Hahnemann's The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, 663

Hakluyt's Voyages, 264, 265, 313, 314, 338, 339, 388, 389

Hallam's Constitutional History, 621-623

Hamilton's The Federalist, 519

Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp, 681

Harvey's Circulation of Blood, 262

Hawthorne's Wonder Book, 5 " The Scarlet Letter, 122 " House of Seven Gables, 176 " The Marble Faun, 424 " Twice Told Tales, 531 " Blithedale Romance, 592

Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Characters, 65 " Table Talk, 321 " Lectures, 411 " Spirit of the Age and Lectures on English Poets, 459

Hebbel's Plays, 694

Helps' (Sir Arthur) Life of Columbus, 332

Herbert's Temple, 309

Herodotus (Rawlinson's), 405, 406

Herrick's Hesperides, 310

Hobbes' Leviathan, 691

Holinshed's Chronicle, 800

Holmes' Life of Mozart, 564

Holmes' (O.W.) Autocrat, 66 " Professor, 67 " Poet, 68

Homer's Iliad, 453 " Odyssey, 454

Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 201, 202

Horace's Complete Poetical Works, 515

Houghton's Life and Letters of Keats, 801

Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, 58

Hugo's (Victor) Les Misérables, 363, 364 " Notre Dame, 422 " Toilers of the Sea, 509

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, etc., 548, 549

Hutchinson's (Col.) Memoirs, 317

Hutchinson's (W.M.L.) Muses' Pageant, 581, 606, 671

Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, 47 " Select Lectures and Lay Sermons, 498

Ibsen's The Doll's House, etc., 494 " Ghosts, etc., 552 " Pretenders, Pillars of Society, etc., 659 " Brand, 716 " Lady Inger, etc., 729 " Peer Gynt, 747

Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy, 619

Ingram's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 624

Irving's Sketch Book, 117 " Conquest of Granada, 478 " Life of Mahomet, 513

James' (G.P.R.) Richelieu, 357

James (Wm.), Selections from, 739

Johnson's (Dr.) Lives of the Poets, 770-771

Johnson's (R.B.) Book of English Ballads, 572

Jonson's (Ben) Plays, 489, 490

Josephus' Wars of the Jews, 712

Kalidasa's Shakuntala, 629

Keats' Poems, 101

Keble's Christian Year, 690

King's Life of Mazzini, 562

Kinglake's Eothen, 337

Kingsley's (Chas.) Westward Ho! 20 " Heroes, 113 " Hypatia, 230 " Water Babies and Glaucus, 277 " Hereward the Wake, 296 " Alton Locke, 462 " Yeast, 611 " Madam How and Lady Why, 777 " Poems, 793

Kingsley's (Henry) Ravenshoe, 28 " Geoffrey Hamlyn, 416

Kingston's Peter the Whaler, 6 " Three Midshipmen, 7

Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 8 " Essays of Elia, 14 " Letters, 342, 343

Lane's Modern Egyptians, 315

Langland's Piers Plowman, 571

Latimer's Sermons, 40

Law's Serious Call, 91

Layamon's (Wace and) Arthurian Chronicles, 578

Lear (and others), A Book of Nonsense, 806

Le Sage's Gil Blas, 437, 438

Leslie's Memoirs of John Constable, 563

Lever's Harry Lorrequer, 177

Lewes' Life of Goethe, 269

Lincoln's Speeches, etc., 206

Livy's History of Rome, 603, 669, 670, 749, 755, 756

Locke's Civil Government, 751

Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, 3 " Life of Scott, 55 " Burns, 156

Longfellow's Poems, 382

Lönnrott's Kalevala, 259, 260

Lover's Handy Andy, 178

Lowell's Among My Books, 607

Lucretius: Of the Nature of Things, 750

Lützow's History of Bohemia, 432

Lyell's Antiquity of Man, 700

Lytton's Harold, 15 " Last of the Barons, 18 " Last Days of Pompeii, 80 " Pilgrims of the Rhine, 390 " Rienzi, 532

Macaulay's England, 34-36 " Essays, 225, 226 " Speeches on Politics, etc., 399 " Miscellaneous Essays, 439

MacDonald's Sir Gibbie, 678 " Phantastes, 732

Machiavelli's Prince, 280 " Florence, 376

Maine's Ancient Law, 734

Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, 45, 46

Malthus on the Principles of Population, 692, 693

Manning's Sir Thomas More, 19 " Mary Powell, and Deborah's Diary, 324

Marcus Aurelius' Golden Book, 9

Marlowe's Plays and Poems, 383

Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy, 82 " Little Savage, 159 " Masterman Ready, 160 " Peter Simple, 232 " Children of New Forest, 247 " Percival Keene, 358 " Settlers in Canada, 370 " King's Own, 580 " Jacob Faithful, 618

Martineau's Feats on the Fjords, 429

Martinengo-Cesaresco's Folk-Lore and Other Essays, 673

Maurice's Kingdom of Christ, 146, 147

Mazzini's Duties of Man, etc., 224

Melville's Moby Dick, 179 " Typee, 180 " Omoo, 297

Merivale's History of Rome, 433

Mignet's French Revolution, 713

Mill's Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, 482

Miller's Old Red Sandstone, 103

Milman's History of the Jews, 377, 378

Milton's Areopagitica and other Prose Works, 795

Milton's Poems, 384

Mommsen's History of Rome, 542-545

Montagu's (Lady) Letters, 69

Montaigne, Florio's, 440-442

More's Utopia, and Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, 461

Morier's Hajji Baba, 679

Morris' (Wm.) Early Romances, 261 " Life and Death of Jason, 575

Motley's Dutch Republic, 86-88

Mulock's John Halifax, 123

Neale's Fall of Constantinople, 655

Newcastle's (Margaret, Duchess of) Life of the First Duke of Newcastle, etc., 722

Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 636 " On the Scope and Nature of University Education, and a Paper on Christianity and Scientific Investigation, 723

Oliphant's Salem Chapel, 244

Osborne (Dorothy), Letters of, 674

Owen's A New View of Society, etc., 799

Paine's Rights of Man, 718

Palgrave's Golden Treasury, 96

Paltock's Peter Wilkins, 676

Park (Mungo), Travels of, 205

Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, 302, 303

Parry's Letters of Dorothy Osborne, 674

Paston's Letters, 752, 753

Paton's Two Morte D'Arthur Romances, 634

Peacock's Headlong Hall, 327

Penn's The Peace of Europe, Some Fruits of Solitude, etc., 724

Pepys' Diary, 53, 54

Percy's Reliques, 148, 149

Pitt's Orations, 145

Plato's Republic, 64 " Dialogues, 456, 457

Plutarch's Lives, 407-409 " Moralia, 565

Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 336 " Poems and Essays, 791

Polo's (Marco) Travels, 306

Pope's Complete Poetical Works, 760

Prelude to Poetry, 789

Prescott's Conquest of Peru, 301 Conquest of Mexico, 397, 398

Procter's Legends and Lyrics, 150

Rawlinson's Herodotus, 405, 406

Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, 29 " Peg Woffington, 299

Reid's (Mayne) Boy Hunters of the Mississippi, 582

Reid's (Mayne) The Boy Slaves, 797

Renan's Life of Jesus, 805

Reynolds' Discourses, 118

Rhys' Fairy Gold, 157 " New Golden Treasury, 695 " Anthology of British Hitstorical Speeches and Orations, 714 " Political Liberty, 745 " Golden Treasury of Longer Poems, 746

Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 590

Richardson's Pamela, 683, 684

Roberts' (Morley) Western Avernus, 762

Robertson's Religion and Life, 37 " Christian Doctrine, 38 " Bible Subjects, 39

Robinson's (Wade) Sermons, 637

Roget's Thesaurus, 630, 631

Rossetti's (D.G.) Poems, 627

Rousseau's Emile, on Education, 518 " Social Contract and Other Essays, 660

Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, 207 " Modern Painters, 208-212 " Stones of Venice, 213-215 " Unto this Last, etc., 216 " Elements of Drawing, etc., 217 " Pre-Raphaelitism, etc., 218 " Sesame and Lilies, 219

Ruskin's Ethics of the Dust, 282 " Crown of Wild Olive, and Cestus of Aglaia, 323 " Time and Tide, with other Essays, 450 " The Two Boyhoods, 688

Russell's Life of Gladstone, 661

Russian Short Stories, 758

Sand's (George) The Devil's Pool, and François the Waif, 534

Scheffel's Ekkehard: A Tale of the 10th Century, 529

Scott's (M.) Tom Cringle's Log, 710

Scott's (Sir W.) Ivanhoe, 16 " Fortunes of Nigel, 71 " Woodstock, 72 " Waverley, 75 " The Abbot, 124 " Anne of Geierstein, 125 " The Antiquary, 126 " Highland Widow, and Betrothed, 127 " Black Dwarf, Legend of Montrose, 123 " Bride of Lammermoor, 129 " Castle Dangerous, Surgeon's Daughter, 130 " Robert of Paris, 131 " Fair Maid of Perth, 132 " Guy Mannering, 133 " Heart of Midlothian, 134 " Kenilworth, 135 " The Monastery, 136 " Old Mortality, 137 " Peveril of the Peak, 138 " The Pirate, 139 " Quentin Durward, 140 " Redgauntlet, 141 " Rob Roy, 142 " St. Ronan's Well, 143 " The Talisman, 144 " Lives of the Novelists, 331 " Poems and Plays, 550, 551

Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, 665

Seeley's Ecce Homo, 305

Sewell's (Anna) Black Beauty, 748

Shakespeare's Comedies, 153 " Histories, etc., 154 " Tragedies, 155

Shelley's Poetical Works, 257, 258

Shelley's (Mrs.) Frankenstein, 616

Sheppard's Charles Auchester, 505

Sheridan's Plays, 95

Sismondi's Italian Republics, 250

Smeaton's Life of Shakespeare, 514

Smith's A Dictionary of Dates, 554

Smith's Wealth of Nations, 412, 413

Smith's (George) Life of Wm. Carey, 395

Smith's (Sir Wm.) Smaller Classical Dictionary, 495

Smollett's Roderick Random, 790

Sophocles, Young's, 114

Southey's Life of Nelson, 52

Speke's Source of the Nile, 50

Spence's Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632

Spencer's (Herbert) Essays on Education, 504

Spenser's Faerie Queene, 443, 444

Spinoza's Ethics, etc., 481

Spyri's Heidi, 431

Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury, 89 " Eastern Church, 251

Steele's The Spectator, 164-167

Sterne's Tristram Shandy, 617 " Sentimental Journey and Journal to Eliza, 796

Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped, 763 " Master of Ballantrae and the Black Arrow, 764 " Virginibus Puerisque and Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 765 " An Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey, and Silverado Squatters, 766 " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Merry Men, etc., 767 " Poems, 768 " In the South Seas and Island Nights' Entertainments, 769

St. Francis, The Little Flowers of, etc., 485

Stopford Brooke's Theology in the English Poets, 493

Stow's Survey of London, 589

Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 371

Strickland's Queen Elizabeth, 100

Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, 379 " Divine Love and Wisdom, 635 " Divine Providence, 658

Swift's Gulliver's Travels, 60 " Journal to Stella, 757 " Tale of a Tub, etc., 347

Tacitus' Annals, 273 " Agricola and Germania, 274

Taylor's Words and Places, 517

Tennyson's Poems, 44, 626

Thackeray's Esmond, 73 " Vanity Fair, 298 " Christmas Books, 359 " Pendennis, 425, 426 " Newcomes, 465, 466 " The Virginians, 507, 508 " English Humorists, and The Four Georges, 610 " Roundabout Papers, 687

Thierry's Norman Conquest, 198, 199

Thoreau's Walden, 281

Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, 455

Tolstoy's Master and Man, and Other Parables and Tales, 469 " War and Peace, 525-527 " Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, 591 " Anna Karenina, 612, 613

Trench's On the Study of Words and English Past and Present, 788

Trollope's Barchester Towers, 30 " Framley Parsonage, 181 " Golden Lion of Granpere, 761 " The Warden, 182 " Dr. Thorne, 360 " Small House at Allington, 361 " Last Chronicles of Barset, 391, 392

Trotter's The Bayard of India, 396 " Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, 401 " Warren Hastings, 452

Turgeniev's Virgin Soil, 528 " Liza, 677 " Fathers and Sons, 742

Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps, 98

Tytler's Principles of Translation, 168

Vasari's Lives of the Painters, 784-7

Verne's (Jules) Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 319 " Dropped from the Clouds, 367 " Abandoned, 368 " The Secret of the Island, 369 " Five Weeks in a Balloon and Around the World in Eighty Days, 779

Virgil's Aeneid, 161 " Eclogues and Georgics, 222

Voltaire's Life of Charles XII., 270 " Age of Louis XIV., 780

Wace and Layamon's Arthurian Chronicles, 578

Walpole's Letters, 775

Walton's Compleat Angler, 70

Waterton's Wanderings in South America, 772

Wesley's Journal, 105-108

White's Selborne, 48

Whitman's Leaves of Grass (I.) and Democratic Vistas, etc., 573

Whyte-Melville's Gladiators, 523

Wood's (Mrs. Henry) The Channings, 84

Woolman's Journal, etc., 402

Wordsworth's Shorter Poems, 203 " Longer Poems, 311

Wright's An Encyclopædia of Gardening, 555

Xenophon's Cyropaedia, 672

Yonge's The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, 329 " The Book of Golden Deeds, 330 " The Heir of Redclyffe, 362 " The Little Duke, 470 " The Lances of Lynwood, 579

Young's (Arthur) Travels in France and Italy, 720

Young's (Sir George) Sophocles, 114

The New Testament, 93.

Ancient Hebrew Literature, 4 vols., 253-256.

English Short Stories. An Anthology, 143.

Everyman's English Dictionary, 776