Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/459

 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 435 stories are brutally and uncontrolledly indecent, although generally presented like their prototype under the all-atoning garb of religion ; and their heroes are typical Don Juans in the worst sense. The plots are more elaborate and the series of adventures desperately fantastic, though presented with the monotonous sameness of scheme. There are places where Bharat-chandra is free and coarse enough, but in these his gifted followers attempt to outdo their master in his own ground and hobble along in wretched drawing out of the vulgar parts of the theme, floundering in the mud which they delight in but which is as foul and dull as ever human imagination could conceive. The versification is poor, the descriptions dull and conven- tional, and there is hardly any elevating poetic touch or other redeeming feature in these verse-tales, which are never graceful but always graceless in one particular. It would be a mistake to attribute all this to the influence of Persian tales, for it is not clear whether these foreign tales were abundantly accessible and well-known Their depraved taste to the writers of this generation and not due to Persian influence, even when accessible, it is not clear whether such tales are really as bad as they are often represented to be. The Persian tales, to judge from the specimens which have survived, very seldom sink to that depth of indecent realism where these productions of a degenerate and depraved taste do often wallow ; on the other hand, these elaborate Bengali tales unmistakably bear the stamp of Bidydsuxdar-style run riot. It would be better to regard them as representing a phase of the development of literary taste in this period of unstability and degeneracy which is also partially reflected in the send of the Kabiwalas, in the grossness of certain aspects of hap akhdai, tarja, painchali and other productions of the same type. Most of these verse-tales are now scarce,