he
subject-matter of the introductory stanzas, in which the poet presents
himself as an aspirant for literary fame. No writer of established
reputation would be likely to say:

The fool who seeks a poet's fame,
Must look for ridicule and blame,
Like tiptoe dwarf who fain would try
To pluck the fruit for giants high.

In only one other of his writings, in the drama which was undoubtedly
written earlier than the other two dramas, does the poet thus present
his feeling of diffidence to his auditors.

It is of course possible that Kalidasa wrote the first nineteen cantos
when a young man, intending to add more, then turned to other matters,
and never afterwards cared to take up the rather thankless task of
ending a youthful work.

The question does not admit of final solution. Yet whoever reads and
re-reads _The Dynasty of Raghu_, and the other works of its author,
finds the conviction growing ever stronger that our poem in nineteen
cantos is mutilated. We are thus enabled to clear the author of the
charge of a lame and impotent conclusion.

Another adverse criticism cannot so readily be disposed of; that of a
lack of unity in the plot. As the poem treats of a kingly dynasty, we
frequently meet the cry: The king is dead. Long live the king! The
story of Rama himself occupies only six cantos; he is not born until
the tenth canto, he is in heaven after the fifteenth. There are in
truth six heroes, each of whom has to die to make room for his
successor. One may go farther and say that it is not possible to give
a brief and accurate title to the poem. It is not a _Ramayana_, or
epic of Rama's deeds, for Rama is on the stage during only a third of
the poem. It is not properly an epic of Raghu's line, for many kings
of this line are unmentioned. Not merely kings who escape notice by
their obscurity, but also several who fill a large place in Indian
story, whose deeds and adventures are splendidly worthy of epic
treatment. _The Dynasty of Raghu_ is rather an epic poem in which Rama
is the central figure, giving it such unity as it possesses, but which
provides Rama with a most generous background in the shape of selected
episodes concerning his ancestors and his descendants.

Rama is the central figure. Take him away and the poem falls to pieces
like a pearl necklace with a broken string. Yet it may well be doubted
whether the cantos dealing with Rama are the most successful. They are
too compressed, too briefly a