melody of KALIDASA'S
rhythm, to rival whose sweetness and purity of language, so admirably
adapted to the soft repose and celestial rosy hue of his pictures,
would have tried all the fertility of resource, the artistic skill,
and the exquisite ear of the author of LALLA ROOKH himself. I do not
think this poem deserves, and I am sure it will not obtain, that
admiration which the author's masterpieces already made known at once
commanded; at all events, if the work itself is not inferior, it has
not enjoyed the good fortune of having a JONES or a WILSON for
translator.

It may be as well to inform the reader, before he wonder at the
misnomer, that the BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD was either left unfinished by
its author, or time has robbed us of the conclusion; the latter is the
more probable supposition, tradition informing us that the poem
originally consisted of twenty-two cantos, of which only seven now
remain.[C]

[C] [Ten more cantos, of very inferior merit, have been
published since this was written.]

I have derived great assistance in the work of translation from the
Calcutta printed edition of the poem in the Library of the East-India
House; but although the Sanskrit commentaries accompanying the text
are sometimes of the greatest use in unravelling the author's meaning,
they can scarcely claim infallibility; and, not unfrequently, are so
matter-of-fact and prosaic, that I have not scrupled to think, or
rather to feel, for myself. It is, however, PROFESSOR STENZLER'S
edition,[D] published under the auspices of the Oriental Translation
Fund (a society that has liberally encouraged my own undertaking),
that I have chiefly used. Valuable as this work is (and I will not
disown my great obligations to it), it is much to be regretted that
the extracts from the native commentators are so scanty, and the
annotations so few and brief.

[D] [With a Latin translation.]

And now one word as to the manner in which I have endeavoured to
perform my task. Though there is much, I think, that might be struck
out, to the advantage of the poem, this I have in no instance ventured
to do, my aim having been to give the English reader as faithful a
cast of the original as my own power and the nature of things would
permit, and, without attempting to give word for word or line for
line, to produce upon the imagination impressions similar to those
which one who studies the work in Sanskrit would experience.

I will not see