Page:The Bengali Book of English Verse.djvu/24

xx Hur Chunder Dutt began to write early. In 1851 he produced in Calcutta a small volume of poems called Fugitive Pieces. Much of this was reprinted twenty years later in his second volume named Lotus Leaves. Both works are slight; but they contain a pleasing variety of themes drawn from Indian history, and the verse is everywhere graceful. His part in the Album amounted to eleven poems in all. Greece contributed forty-seven separate pieces; and in 1887 published with Messrs. Fisher Unwin a separate volume of poems entitled Cherry Blossoms. In this work several of the earlier contributions to the Album were reprinted, but the greater number of the poems were new. The book was carefully produced and contains much of interest and value. The author had specialised in the difficult sonnet form; and of the 165 poems of the book, no less than 70 are sonnets. The subjects of these poems are as varied as the author's experiences derived from much travel in Europe and India. With this last volume of Greece Chunder Dutt the poetical effort of these gifted relatives may be said to have reached its close. Their achievement was creditable both in its quality and in its consistency. That portion of their work embodied in the Dutt Family Album will remain as a memorial of a gifted family, and as a testimony to the influence of those English teachers who were the first to encourage the higher learning in the city of Calcutta.

The successful treatment of Indian historical themes, of which there are frequent illustrations in the Album, was continued by Shoshee Chunder Dutt who published in 1878 his Vision of Sumeru and other Poems, a compilation of verse written at any time in the preceding twenty years. The greater part of this volume is taken up with historical and legendary poems of such interest as to cause regret that their author