undeserved celebrity, and toe, in our opinion, a very worthless set. The best known among them is Bhárat Chandra Ráy, who was till lately considered the best of the Bengáli poets,—an opinion not yet wholly eradicated, but fast losing ground. Bhárat Chandra is chiefly known by his Vidhya Sundara and his Annadá Mangal. Neither work has much merit, though an exception must be made in favour of the character of Hira, the flower-girl, a coarse but racy and vigorous portrait, not equalled by anything of its kind in Bengáli. One other great distinction, however, must be accorded to Bhárat Chandra. He is the father of modern Bengáli. His versification, too, is very good, and it is the model followed by many distinguished poets of the present day, as, for instance, Bábú Ranga Lál Banerji. In the higher attributes of a poet, Bhárat Chandra is far inferior to many who have preceded and followed him. His works are disfigured, too, by a disgusting obscenity which unfits them for republication at a time when Bengáli readers are not all of the rougher sex.
There is perhaps nothing more lamentable in the whole history of literature than the school of Bengáli writers who followed the Nuddea poets and preceded the present generation. There is scarcely any readable work (readable even in the sense in which Bhárat Chandra’s poems are readable) belonging to that age—the age of the Naba Babu Bilas and the Prabodha Chandrika; as for literary filth, there never was a more copious supply. Happily, the whole mass of rubbish has vanished from public recollection.
To this period belongs the well-known kabi, of which the wealthy Hindus of the last generation were so passionately fond, and on which they lavished immense sums of money. The kabi was a series of songs not often much connected with each other, sung by two opposite bands of performers. Each sought to abuse the other, and the more pungent the abuse, the greater was the triumph of the abuser and the pleasure of the listeners. The singing was generally the most execrable to which human folly has ever given the name of music, though in a few cases the airs were sweet and elegant. The matter was often either common-place or laboured extravagance, though among the songs of Ram Basu, Haru Thakur and Nitai Das, there are some of peculiar excellence. The following prose translation is from one of those most popular in the present day. It may be called The Young Wife’s Lament, and it will be understood only by those who know the very young Bengali wife, who has learned to love but is too timid to speak:
And the lord of my life has left me for a far distant land.
He came to me with a smile and told me he would go:
I saw that smile, and that smile filled my eyes with tears.
I could not let him go; my heart would have made him stay;
