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such pictures that we see how this magician poet has probed the hearts of his countrymen and wrung out of their recesses a poetry which, while it is sweet and human and pure, tries to disentangle itself from misleading philosophy without at the same time assailing the religi- ous susceptibilities of his readers. The love of Bhakti basa high place in his poetry of affections ; but with theories he has nothing to do or at least poetry is higher than these theories.
The poet’s works are full of episodes in which the gentler sex exerts her benign and softening and even pious influence over the heart of man, and he hedges her with a halo of divinity which makes rough man not only love, but respect, her. One of his poems is entitled the Battle-Sacrifice, and its subject is the war against Ravan, the Paris of the Indian Iliad. This Paris has kept his Helen, Sita, in a solitary garden for years, and he daily visits her on the mission of love, but always returns. baffled by his own heart. Andwhy? Heis a ferocious monarch and a voluptuous lover. He might court Sit& or lay violent hands upon her honour. What makes him desist? The husband of Siti is at the gates of his capital with a powerful army. Ravan ought either to restore Sits to him or to force his Helen to yield to his wishes. He can do neither, and is ina fix. His haughty spirit disdains to yield in humiliation to an enemy. On the other hand he can do nothing.
