an unstudied eloquence, and should therefore be used in the drama[4].'
Shakespeare does not scruple to avail himself of this licence four or
five times in succession, as in the well-known passage beginning--

'To be or not to be, that is the question';

and even Milton uses the same freedom once or twice in every page.

The poetical merit of Kálidása's '[S']akoontalá' is so universally
admitted that any remarks on this head would be superfluous. I will
merely observe that, in the opinion of learned natives, the Fourth
Act, which describes the departure of [S']akoontalá from the hermitage,
contains the most obvious beauties; and that no one can read this Act,
nor indeed any part of the play, without being struck with the
richness and elevation of its author's genius, the exuberance and glow
of his fancy, his ardent love of the beautiful, his deep sympathy with
Nature and Nature's loveliest scenes, his profound knowledge of the
human heart, his delicate appreciation of its most refined feelings,
his familiarity with its conflicting sentiments and emotions. But in
proportion to the acknowledged excellence of Kálidása's composition,
and in proportion to my own increasing admiration of its beauties, is
the diffidence I feel lest I may have failed to infuse any of the
poetry of the original into the present version. Translation of poetry
must, at the best, resemble the process of pouring a highly volatile
and evanescent spirit from one receptacle into another. The original
fluid will always suffer a certain amount of waste and evaporation.

The English reader will at least be inclined to wonder at the
analogies which a thoroughly Eastern play offers to our own dramatic
compositions written many centuries later. The dexterity with which