Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/336

 312 BENGALI LITERATURE literature in that period ; and the 18th century literature is marked throughout by an entire absence of the literary influence of the lyric and romantic songs of Baisnab poets. The literary practice of the 18th century is a natural reaction and going back to conventional standards of verse-making, with a more or less decided leaning towards the ornate and the erudite, Rhetoric rather than truth, fancy rather than imagination, intellect rather than feeling—this becomes the more mundane means of poetry, in which we miss_ the passionate idealism or the lyric mysticism of the Baisnabs. The Kabiwalas, no doubt, were carried away more or less by this general literary drift of the period ; but it was the Kabiwalas alone who had kept up the tradition of Baisnab poetry in this age of a militant literary tendency. That Kabi-literature, in some way or other, is connected with Baisnab literature and that the ee er the Kabiwalas, were, if not the lineal descendant, at least distantly related to the great Baisnab poets, is shown to some extent by the fact that the best part of earlier Kabi-songs relates to the eternal Baisnab theme—the love of Radha and Krsna with all its attendant intricacies of man, mathur, btraha, gostha, and other things. The Kabiwalas, it is true, have not got much of the accumulated virtue of Baisnab verse and phrase as well as its deep note of passion and ful- ness of romantic colour ; yet it is remarkable that they still make use of the imagery and the hackneyed generalities of Baisnab writings, and generally echo the sentiments and ideas which had become established in literary usage since the time of the Baisnab poets. It is not always safe to dogmatise, in the absence of evidence, on influences or on the question of literary filiation ; but these facts, among others, would tend to indicate the existence of an