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poem of Premdnand, while the best of his poems are read by the fireside and in family circles on summer nights, those who can enjoy Shakespeare and Kalidas do not grudge to admit the refined and native charms in the great poems of this man. There is that in his works which gratifies all, and therefore must make bim immortal where he can be understood.
He has drawn upon numerous episodes from Sanskrit literature and other sources, and chosen for his subjects names and tales whose very mention was enough to attract people to take up his works for reading. An apt illustration of this may be found in the fact that the subjects of some of his best poems are episodes from the lifeof the popular poet Narasinha Mehta. He scrupulously avoids doing violence to the popular faith and beliefs, and at the same time is always loth to degrade himself by pandering to the vulgarities of the masses or stooping to the sensualism of the Vaishnav poetry, Upon such foundations he raises solid and tasteful superstructures by supplying the people with adaptations of their time- honoured and revered tale and fictions into the language and life of Gujarat. From this language and life he makes clever selections of what is beautiful or sublime, His great province is the beautiful and the sublime in the hearts of the men and women of his country. As regards the actual manners of society, he Pints them in glowing
