the disadvantage
of not giving me that technical mastery which the effort of learning
step by step alone can give. Of what may be called proficiency in music,
therefore, I acquired none.

Ever since my return from the Himalayas it was a case of my getting more
freedom, more and more. The rule of the servants came to an end; I saw
to it with many a device that the bonds of my school life were also
loosened; nor to my home tutors did I give much scope. Gyan Babu, after
taking me through "The Birth of the War-god" and one or two other books
in a desultory fashion, went off to take up a legal career. Then came
Braja Babu. The first day he put me on to translate "The Vicar of
Wakefield." I found that I did not dislike the book; but when this
encouraged him to make more elaborate arrangements for the advancement
of my learning I made myself altogether scarce.

As I have said, my elders gave me up. Neither I nor they were troubled
with any more hopes of my future. So I felt free to devote myself to
filling up my manuscript book. And the writings which thus filled it
were no better than could have been expected. My mind had nothing in it
but hot vapour, and vapour-filled bubbles frothed and eddied round a
vortex of lazy fancy, aimless and unmeaning. No forms were evolved,
there was only the distraction of movement, a bubbling up, a bursting
back into froth. What little of matter there was in it was not mine, but
borrowed from other poets. What was my own was the restlessness, the
seething tension within me. When motion has been born, while yet the
balance of forces has not matured, then is there blind chaos indeed.

My sister-in-law[35] was a great lover of literature. She did not read
simply to kill time, but the Bengali books which she read filled her
whole mind. I was a partner in her literary enterprises. She was a
devoted admirer of "The Dream Journey." So was I; the more particularly
as, having been brought up in the atmosphere of its creation, its
beauties had become intertwined with every fibre of my heart.
Fortunately it was entirely beyond my power of imitation, so it never
occurred to me to attempt anything like it.

"The Dream Journey" may be likened to a superb palace of Allegory, with
innumerable halls, chambers, passages, corners and niches full of
statuary and pictures, of wonderful design and workmanship; and in the
grounds around gardens, bowers, fountains and shady nooks in profusion.
Not only do poetic t