whether modern or ancient, will, I think, supply instances of different works by one and the same author of world-wide fame exhibiting various powers of poesy and invention. And yet it will never do to reject the less good productions, and call them spurious, or which is the same, attribute them to inferior hands.
Though I do not here undertake to treat the question of Kâlidâsa's age, it seems nevertheless desirable that Professor Wilson's statement that the present drama may belong to the tenth or elevenbh, or even a later century, should be carefully sifted before we accept it as correct. Indeed, the great orientalist himself appears to have been, in the same summary of the drama, more than half willing to modify his statement by referring,with a candidness as great as his learning, to such of its features as would require us to assign it to a greater antiquity than the tenth or eleventh century after Christ.
"The dramas", say Professor Wilson, "written in more recent periods are, invariably, as far as is yet known, mythological, and have some one of the forms or family of Vishnu for the hero. There is no such thing as a decidedly modern drama the business of which is domestic intrigue.” Whatever may be thought of the reason that he gives to account for that fact,-viz., that "such a subject, indeed, was wholly incompatible with Hindu feelings, as affected by intercourse with their Mahomedan masters, whether the effect of that intercourse was terror or imitation,”-it is perfectly correct that modern poets and dramatists seem to have written under the notion that poesy should not be debased by
