Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/359

 KABIWALAS 335 wood-notes may lack refinement and polish but they are exceedingly tender, simple and human. And it is by force of its tenderness, its simplicity, and human _ interest, wherever these qualities may be found, that Kabi-poetry is so appealing. In their form, again, these songs possess not much of stylistic grace and their bold use of collo- quialism is often bare and unadorned ; yet the veracity of the vernacular and the raciness of the spoken idiom impart to these songs a charm of their own, easy, direct and simple yet plastic and artful in their very want of art. It will be amply clear from this that Kabi-poetry cannot be regarded merely asa belated product of the Baisnab school, although in a distant way it attempted to carry on the older tradition. Its permanent ০ বরা, It possesses characteristic trait of its own which marks it off as a distinet, though not independent, type of national utterance. If it is not music yearning like a god in pain, it is charaec- terised by full-throated ease and robust healthy mentality at least in certain spheres. Higher flights of poetry were unsuited to its hard and narrow environment ; the rambling life of its votaries stored their minds with little learning or culture; they indulged in metrical exercises partly as the means of earning livelihood under the not-too-liberal patronage of the isolated aristocracy of the priests and the princes, of the plain democracy of poor peasants in the remote villages, of the respectable middle class of thrifty merchants and banians in the crowded cities. Though the roar of the cannon at Plassey or Udaynala was but heard faintly by them and they were quite oblivious of the world around them, living and moving in an isolated social world or a conventional poetic world of their own: yet the latter half of 18th century with its