Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/451

 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 427 lyrists nor can they be definitely affiliated to any recognised school of ancient writers. But the poets and songsters whom we propose to take up in this chapter, unlike the writers already dealt with, detinitely and unmistakably tread in the footsteps of the old-world poets. Their poetic gift move within the narrow compass of conventional art, and though exhibiting widest individual differences, these imitative _ Writers dealt with poets are bound by the common in this chapter are Zone 7 , however ‘relics’ or characteristic of belonging to the ag ell Mage past, both in form and spirit. Being tang and form to the thus artificially limited, they are hardly original, except in so far as they may vary a single tune by playing it upon the several recognised stops. This department of verse, therefore, is singularly depressing. Except in inspired snatches, there is hardly anything of first-rate quality, and the great bulk of this narrowly imitative literature is flat and tedious. The recognised literary species had been already suffering from exhaustion of material and the declining powers of these belated imitators could hardly impart to them a spark of vivifying force. Want of subject-matter and of capacity for original achievement is precisely the defect of this poetry. In the first place, we have a group of writers who follow the time- honoured tradition of translating the ae groups of Sanserit Ramayan, Mahabharat and Srimad-bhigabat into the vernacular. Next we have a band of minor poets—some of them not merely minor but insignificant—who wrote verse-tales of the erotie type in imitation of Bharat Chandra but who could not reproduce his poetry as they could magnify the dull obscenities which unfortunately taint his writings. After them, come a host of miscellaneous songsters—most