jourd'hui encore la
puissance et la souplesse de ce magnifique genie; seul entre les
disciples de Sarasvati [the goddess of eloquence], il a eu le bonheur
de produire un chef-d'oeuvre vraiment classique, ou l'Inde s'admire et
ou l'humanite se reconnait. Les applaudissements qui saluerent la
naissance de Cakuntala a Ujjayini ont apres de longs siecles eclate
d'un bout du monde a l'autre, quand William Jones l'eut revelee a
l'Occident. Kalidasa a marque sa place dans cette pleiade etincelante
ou chaque nom resume une periode de l'esprit humain. La serie de ces
noms forme l'histoire, ou plutot elle est l'histoire meme.[4]

It is hardly possible to say anything true about Kalidasa's
achievement which is not already contained in this appreciation. Yet
one loves to expand the praise, even though realising that the critic
is by his very nature a fool. Here there shall at any rate be none
of that cold-blooded criticism which imagines itself set above a
world-author to appraise and judge, but a generous tribute of
affectionate admiration.

The best proof of a poet's greatness is the inability of men to live
without him; in other words, his power to win and hold through
centuries the love and admiration of his own people, especially when
that people has shown itself capable of high intellectual and
spiritual achievement.

For something like fifteen hundred years, Kalidasa has been more
widely read in India than any other author who wrote in Sanskrit.
There have also been many attempts to express in words the secret of
his abiding power: such attempts can never be wholly successful, yet
they are not without considerable interest. Thus Bana, a celebrated
novelist of the seventh century, has the following lines in some
stanzas of poetical criticism which he prefixes to a historical
romance:

Where find a soul that does not thrill
In Kalidasa's verse to meet
The smooth, inevitable lines
Like blossom-clusters, honey-sweet?

A later writer, speaking of Kalidasa and another poet, is more laconic
in this alliterative line: _Bhaso hasah, Kalidaso vilasah_--Bhasa is
mirth, Kalidasa is grace.

These two critics see Kalidasa's grace, his sweetness, his delicate
taste, without doing justice to the massive quality without which his
poetry could not have survived.

Though Kalidasa has not been as widely appreciated in Europe as he
deserves, he is the only Sanskrit poet who can properly be said to
have been appreciated at