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Muéh has been doné of late, especidlly by thé adminis- tration of His Highness the Gaekwar and by the Editor of the Gujarati, to unfathom from oblivion the writings of this as of other poets. But it seems the law of the survival of the fittest has worked in Gujarati poetry, for it may bé at once asserted that those works of the poet which were known and preserved by the people of Gujarat prior to these discoveries are the best as well as the maturest of Preménand’s productions. No doubt much yet remains unexplored, and it may be premature to form any opinion so soon ; still past experience shows that the new discoveries are not likely to be of further interest. than ‘so far.as they may allow us a peep into the poet's individuality and history. Of course ‘again even of this. kind is not to be ignored, but it can have only an histori- cal and scholarly rather than poetical interest.
The poets of this age are in one seise above the society in which they lived. This society does not seem to have much differed from the one which is vanishing during this our own generation under the influence of Western ideas. The poems of Akho, Preménand, and Samal, all foreshadowed a society higher than this; and probably their ideal would have been reached, had not. political vicissitudes blasted the new life that was be- ginning to dawn on the country. Thus the most popular of Premanand’s poemis draws a social picture which even.
