men and women with a serene and godlike
tread, neither self-indulgent nor ascetic, with mind and senses ever
alert to every form of beauty. We know that his poetry was popular
while he lived, and we cannot doubt that his personality was equally
attractive, though it is probable that no contemporary knew the full
measure of his greatness. For his nature was one of singular balance,
equally at home in a splendid court and on a lonely mountain, with men
of high and of low degree. Such men are never fully appreciated during
life. They continue to grow after they are dead.

II

Kalidasa left seven works which have come down to us: three dramas,
two epics, one elegiac poem, and one descriptive poem. Many other
works, including even an astronomical treatise, have been attributed
to him; they are certainly not his. Perhaps there was more than one
author who bore the name Kalidasa; perhaps certain later writers were
more concerned for their work than for personal fame. On the other
hand, there is no reason to doubt that the seven recognised works are
in truth from Kalidasa's hand. The only one concerning which there is
reasonable room for suspicion is the short poem descriptive of the
seasons, and this is fortunately the least important of the seven. Nor
is there evidence to show that any considerable poem has been lost,
unless it be true that the concluding cantos of one of the epics have
perished. We are thus in a fortunate position in reading Kalidasa: we
have substantially all that he wrote, and run no risk of ascribing to
him any considerable work from another hand.

Of these seven works, four are poetry throughout; the three dramas,
like all Sanskrit dramas, are written in prose, with a generous
mingling of lyric and descriptive stanzas. The poetry, even in the
epics, is stanzaic; no part of it can fairly be compared to English
blank verse. Classical Sanskrit verse, so far as structure is
concerned, has much in common with familiar Greek and Latin forms:
it makes no systematic use of rhyme; it depends for its rhythm not
upon accent, but upon quantity. The natural medium of translation into
English seems to me to be the rhymed stanza;[3] in the present work
the rhymed stanza has been used, with a consistency perhaps too rigid,
wherever the original is in verse.

Kalidasa's three dramas bear the names: _Malavika and Agnimitra,
Urvashi_, and _Shakuntala_. The two epics are _The Dynasty of Raghu_
and _The Birth of the W