ll, even more than in his emotions, keeps full possession of the
stage, and imparts a reality to every scene which makes the wildest
flight of fancy bear a real relation to the common experiences of human
life.

The "Sakoontala" is divided into seven acts, and is a mixture of prose
and verse;--each character rising in the intensity of emotional
utterance into bursts of lyric poetry. The first act introduces the King
of India, Dushyanta, armed with bow and arrows, in a chariot with his
driver. They are passing through a forest in pursuit of a black
antelope, which they fail to overtake before the voice of some hermit
forbids them to slay the creature as it belongs to the hermitage. The
king piously desists and reaches the hermitage of the great saint Kanwa,
who has left his companions in charge of his foster-daughter,
Sakoontala, while he is bound on a pilgrimage. Following these hermits
the king finds himself within the precincts of a sacred grove, where
rice is strewn on the ground to feed the parrots that nest in the hollow
trunks, and where the unterrified antelopes do not start at the human
voice. The king stops his chariot and alights, so as not to disturb the
dwellers in the holy wood. He feels a sudden throb in his right arm,
which augurs happy love, and sees hermit maidens approaching to sprinkle
the young shrubs, with watering-pots suited to their strength. The forms
of these hermit maidens eclipse those found in queenly halls, as the
luxuriance of forest vines excels the trim vineyards of cultivation.
Amongst these maidens the king, concealed by the trees, observes
Sakoontala, dressed in the bark garment of a hermit--like a blooming bud
enclosed within a sheath of yellow leaves. When she stands by the
_kesara_-tree, the king is impressed by her beauty, and regrets that she
is, if of a purely Brahmanic origin, forbidden to marry one of the
warrior class, even though he be a king. A very pretty description is
given of the pursuit of Sakoontala by a bee which her sprinkling has
startled from a jasmine flower. From this bee she is rescued by the
king, and is dismayed to find that the sight of the stranger affects her
with an emotion unsuited to the holy grove. She hurries off with her two
companions, but as she goes she declares that a prickly _kusa_-grass has
stung her foot; a _kuruvaka_-bush has caught her garment, and while her
companions disentangle it, she takes a long look at the king, who
confesses that he