Intellect, I forget whether male or female, when the play ends*. LETTER IV. YOUR enquiry concerning the lyric and amatory poetry of the Hindûs, encourages me to hope that my last letter was more interesting to you than I had dared to believe when I dispatched it. There certainly can be no difference of opinion concerning the puerile taste that could tolerate Hanumân and his baboon associates in an epic poem; yet we must not forget that one of our best poets in the present age has his Gylbin Horner. As the belief of necromancy and magic was general in India, I cannot see the impropriety of introducing it in poems of every description. The magic of Medea and the incantations of the Weird Sisters are great examples of the sublime use that may be made of this supernatural, and I had almost said, picturesque machinery; and though my knowledge of the classics is only a kind of secondhand acquaintance * Since these Letters went to press, a particular account of Dr. Taylor's Translation of the "Rise of the Moon of Intellect," has appeared in the forty-fourth number of the Edinburgh Review. through the medium of translation, like the man who fancied himself intimate with the vil lage lord, because he had crossed the ferry in the same boat with his lordship's horses, I will venture to ask you, if the sorceress of Bhavabhuti be not at least as poetical a personage as Lucan's old witch? The fatal effects of the hasty curse pronounced by the choleric Brahmin in Sacontala, shocks you, but you forget how Greeks fell sacrifices to the vengeful many imprecations of Chryses, or how Ajax perished and Ulysses wandered, the victims of supernatural curses. I know you will laugh at all this, but remember I am not saying that the luxuriant shoots of the Oriental palm-tree surpass in beauty or in flavour the purple clusters of the European vine, but only that there is a beauty, inferior indeed, but striking and characteristic in these monuments of eastern civilization and literature. I believe that there are many lyric poets among the Hindû writers, but I can only name Jayadeva, whose odes the Hindûs are fond of explaining in a moral and religious sense, as the Persians do those of Hafiz, but I believe that the poets certainly mean what they say, and not what their countrymen choose to attribute to them, and I think you will be of the same opi nion unless you discover a spiritual sense in such lines as Or, When in the goblet's ruddy dies I see the sun of bliss arise, In her bright cheek who hands the wine If in the breeze thy sighing breath Should pass where Hafiz sleeps in death, . The amatory poetry of India is said not to be deficient of tenderness of expression and thought, but the passion it sings is too little refined for our western taste, though its language is highly polished. There is, however, a serious kind of love poem, the description of which is exceedingly laughable, though it be written in sober earnest. In it, various descriptions of lovers and mistresses distinguished by age, temper, and circumstances, are systematically classed and logically defined, with the utmost seriousness and precision, as if they were intended for the bureau de mariages, which I hear has lately been opened at Paris. Nor is this the only childishness the venerable Bramins have tolerated; for though I cannot learn that they ever hit upon the pretty conceit of writing verses in the shape of a hatchet or an egg, they have metres where the lines increase in arithmetical progression, and poems composed with such studied ambiguity that the reader may at his own option read in them either of two distinct stories totally unconnected with each other. There is a class of writings not uncommon in Sanscrit called champú, consisting of a mixture of prose and verse, in the manner of the History of the Civil Wars of Grenada, in the Spanish, great part of which is related in those simple and pathetic ballads we have seen occasionally translated. And there are some exquisitely polished prose works, which from their extreme elegance are ranked among poems like Telemaque and Tod Abels. The story of one of these so nearly resembles the Oberon of Wieland that I cannot resist giving it to you, only observing, that the Hindu hero is not required so far to transgress the bounds of decorum as to steal the teeth and mustaches of his unfortunate father-in-law. "Candarpa-cetu, a young and valiant prince, son of Chintamani, king of Cusumapura, sees in a dream a beautiful girl of whom he becomes enamoured. Impressed with a belief of the real existence of the damsel, he resolves to travel in search of her, accompanied only by his friend Macaranda. While reposing under a tree in the forests of the Vindhya mountains, the favourite overhears two birds discoursing, and learns from them that the princess Vasavadatta had refused the hands of many suitors, having seen prince Candarpa-cetu in a dream, wherein she not only became acquainted with his person and manners, but his name. Meanwhile the young lady's confidante having been sent by her mistress in search of the hero, discovers the two friends in the forest, and delivering a letter to the young prince conducts him to the palace, whence after mutual explanations he conveys the princess. Misfortune, however, pursues them, for scarcely had they reached the forest, when in the darkness of the night the lover loses his mistress, upon which after a fruitless search, being arrived at the sea-shore, he resolves to cast himself into the sea, but is arrested by a voice from heaven promising the recovery of the princess and indicating the Here the resemblance to the story of Wieland stops, for Vasavadatta is discovered spell-bound, in the form of a marble statue from which Candarpa-cetu alone can release her. After her restoration, she relates her separate adventures, and they proceed together to Cusumapura, where they pass a long life in uninterrupted happiness. means. Probably if we knew a little more of the native tales of India, we might trace the sources whence many of the early romances of Europe |