Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/324

 4 300 BENGALI LITERATURE it is doubtful if we have entirely outgrown this stage of defective mental susceptibility, although critics are not wanting who would go to the other extreme of fanatical admiration. Isvar Gupta, in the early fifties, spoke in exuberantly enthusiastic language of the untutored songs of the old Kabis; yet if we are to take Bankim-chandra as the representative of the next generation, we find his age regarding these compositions with frank disapproval, if not always with superior contempt. In recent years, when we are not aMogether obtuse and irresponsive, we have taught ourselves to speak in sober tone and measured language. In literary history, there are no doubt extreme vicissitudes of taste whereby the idols of the past genera- tion crumble suddenly to dust, while new favourites are raised to the old pedestal of glory; yet in spite of such successive waves of aesthetical preference, we must guard against falling into the error of orthodox dogmatism, on the one hand, and the ignorant following of fashion, on the other. Leaving aside personal predilections and the narrowness of sects and coteries we find critics even to- day who would see nothing in these forms of literature which is well worth a moment’s thought. Much of this literature, as in the case of some of the songs of the Kabiwalas, is no doubt transient and ephemeral and there is certainly much in it which is really contemptible; yet the frivolity of an imitative culture or the wild pursuit of ever-shifting literary fashion ought not to blind us to the historical and literary value, whatever it might be, of the art and literature of a generation which haS passed away. It is idle to regard any particular form of art or mode of utterance as final or absolutely authoritative. Critical taste should be more open-minded and unprejudiced and the study of literature should be placed upon sounder historical and scientific methods.