Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/351

 KABIWALAS 327 possessed in contributing to the transient amusement of a hardly less illiterate public: and their forensic style, which can only be elevating when the inspiration itself is noble, naturally resulted in a dead level of the common- place or the conventional. To arrest the fugitive attention of the audience, the Kabiwalas make abundant use of the borrowed tricks of conventional rhetoric. It is certainly true that out of ten verses even whole stanzas may be found which do not lack power; but, generally speaking, beauty and refinement yield place to a constant striving after effect, to an attempt at clever and spirited improvisation, wanting entirely in strength, art, or polish, though capable, through its effective forensic Its affectation and Qualities, of awakening the easily artificiality. excitable popular enthusiasm. They composed too fast to compose well ; and their critical sense was not sufficiently strong to save them from all the faults of fatal fluency and fertility. Hence we find the fault of repetition, frequency of stock-phrases, monotony of identical form and idea, singular baldness of details, childish jingle of weakly, though effective, words, which are unavoidable in oral composition but which appear dull and flat in reading. The sentiment is too often trite and the ideas conventional, and the author, in his futile attempt to disguise his want of originality by frequent affectation and constant use of stilted devices, becomes thoroughly artificial and unconvincing. One of the tricks which is peculiarly favoured by the Kabiwalas for the purpose of impressing upon the এ 80486781888 fickle sensibilities of an uneritical ing and use of al- audience is the excessive use of literation, alliteration and pun. When used with moderation and judgment, alliteration is no doubt